On Wed, Apr 21, 2004 at 10:03:24AM +0200, Nicolas Ecarnot wrote: > Level n backup is a backup where you save what has changed since the > last level n backup. period.
Minor correction: A level N backup saves all files that have changed since the last level N-1 backup. Level 0 gets everything, since there are no level -1s. The practical effect of this is that restoring will require at most one tape more than the highest-level backup that has been run. (e.g., If a DLE gets up to level 3 (the highest I've seen here), restoring it will require, at most, 4 tapes (one each of L0, L1, L2, and L3) regardless of the dumpcycle or how many tapes of each level have been run.)