Deleting Incremental Backups

[paulb104]

Hi. I'm sorry if this is in the wrong forum. I decided that system backups fell under the security area...


So in August 2013 I set up my my computer to be backed up via a daily incremental method. Now it's thirteen months later and I've got 380+ incremental folders.

In this time I've never needed to restore a file.

I don't remember any of the research I did, not one bit, regarding the keeping or deleting of the backups.

What can I safely delete? Anything at all?

Any insight into this will be greatly appreciated

Thanks!

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I would suggest that you do full backup and then delete all the incrementals. When I used a tape drive, we did full backups on Friday and then incrementals Monday the Thursday. Now I just use FBackup (free) to mirror the drives. Much easier, no backup files, just a full copy of data.

 

[kanewolf]

I saw a thread about backups recently and it mentioned the importance of easy restore rather than easy backup. Obviously a full backup is the simplest to restore. You should reconfigure your backup software to do full backups no less than every two weeks, weekly is optimal, especially if you can do it during off hours on the weekend or something. Do incrementals in between full backups and verify them. If you have critical data (My Documents, etc) have a separate full backup of that data daily.

An image backup of your boot volume is also useful so that you can restore the OS quickly.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

This is where partitioning comes in handy..... rather than select a host of folders to do backups on, you can just select your DATA partition, and do that daily. Programs partition, OS Partition image once a month.

With HD's so cheap these days, mirroring is a breeze...... backups take literally seconds and no waiting on restores. Just look for the data on the 2nd HD and restor at your leisure.

 

[kanewolf]

This is where partitioning comes in handy..... rather than select a host of folders to do backups on, you can just select your DATA partition, and do that daily. Programs partition, OS Partition image once a month.

With HD's so cheap these days, mirroring is a breeze...... backups take literally seconds and no waiting on restores. Just look for the data on the 2nd HD and restor at your leisure.

"Cold mirroring" -- not realtime copies to multiple disks is convenient, but if possible, you can create multiple full backups -- I keep 7, one for each day of my most critical files. I get multiple chances to recover something and a week to realized something was deleted or corrupted before the backup is wiped out.

I have chosen to use Acronis as my backup tool. It can do everything we have discussed plus create the boot image.

 

[JackNaylorPE]

I have Acronis but don't use it. Woulda returned it to newegg but shipping was 60% of the cost

FBackup does it for free,

The desktop mirrors itself nightly ..... I do my lappie weekly which is basically just my e-mail. Also do a weekly backup to a HD which is stored off site, alternating multiple HDs.