Can Reliable LifeSaver back up an external drive?
Yes, it can. However, some issues will arise if the external drive is disconnected when a backup runs. When an external drive is mounted in a Unix-based file system (e.g. Macintosh OS X, Linux, or Unix), it is treated as an ordinary directory. When it is disconnected, the directory is still present, but read as empty. This causes Reliable LifeSaver to assume that the files in that directory have been deleted, and proceed accordingly—moving those files to the data retention area. When the external drive is later reconnected, the files present will be read as new. This will cause them to be re-uploaded to the data center, possibly artificially inflating the amount of data stored. It may also cause a situation where, if there was a large amount of data present on that external drive, that the backup will take an inordinately long period of time to complete. This is due to the large amount of data that needs to be transferred, and especially needs to be watched for if a seed backup was use
