Similarly, if you set retention to 3 months and turn your computer off for 6 months then your most recent backup set will be deleted. Basically, if your backup set retention (Full deletion) is less than your backup set cycle (time between Fulls) then you can't really manage your restore points.
Given that child backups are deleted whenever a Full is deleted, would this setup result in the entire backup set being deleted at Week 6 and a new Full being created at that point rather than a Diff as would have been specified in the schedule? And what if "Run purge before backup" is not enabled? Would that setup cause the Diff to run as scheduled on Week 6 and THEN the entire backup set being deleted, including the Diff that was just created? Or would old Fulls not be purged until the second month when a new Full is scheduled?Īnd what if "Run purge before backup" is not enabled? Would that setup cause the Diff to run as scheduled on Week 6 and THEN the entire backup set being deleted, including the Diff that was just created? Or would old Fulls not be purged until the second month when a new Full is scheduled? Yes, If you set the rules to run after the current backup then, to honour the rules, this would delete the entire set. Let's suppose "Run purge before backup" is enabled. I know that when a "higher order" backup is purged, all of its child backups are also purged, but does the retention policy specifically for Fulls evaluated/applied only when a Full backup will be (or was just) performed, or when a backup of ANY kind will be (or was just) performed? The scenario in question is this the OP's schedule of monthly Fulls and weekly Diffs, with the Full retention policy set to 6 weeks.
or as Arvy suggested above, you could switch only your Full retention policy to be based on number of backups rather than time in case your laptop is offline during the monthly scheduled Full and you want to guarantee that you always have at least 2 Fulls, for example.īy jphughan - 4 June 2017 5:23 staff, this thread got me wondering if the proposed setup might lead to some strange and/or unintended consequences. Otherwise that retention policy seems perfectly reasonable to me. Either set the retention to 1 month or 2 depending on how many you want. Fulls retained for 6 weeks and Diffs for 4 is an unusual setup, hence my question about what types of backups you perform when am currently using the one of the defaults which had the retention rules in my original post.These runFull on the 1st Saturday of the monthDifferential each MondayIncremental every evening except Monday Ok, if you're only doing 1 Full per month, retaining for 6 weeks doesn't make a ton of sense to me. Jphughan - 3 June 2017 9:04 PM t would also help to share your actual backup schedule, not just your retention policy. So if you were doing monthly Fulls and weekly Diffs, you might want to specify your Full retention in months and your Diff retention in weeks, which is why I said it's unusual to have both of those set to weeks and very closely spaced.
Typically if you're using time-based retention (rather than backup-based), the retention interval for each type would match the interval at which those backups are actually performed. Fulls retained for 6 weeks and Diffs for 4 is an unusual setup, hence my question about what types of backups you perform when. It would also help to share your actual backup schedule, not just your retention policy. Either will work, but it sounds as if your primary concern is having at least two backup sets available regardless of any other consideration.įunny enough I was just reading that in the link you provided. In that case, you may want to consider specifying numeric retention limits rather than age limits. I appreciate that it all revolves about what works for the user as long as I have a back up on my external drive or maybe two backups that should fit in for me Will have a look at the link _ EDIT: Screenshot of your retention rule revisions with specific results of Reflect's regular "housekeeping" process. Their application is explained in greater detail in this KB article. Retention rules are perhaps best understood as "clean-up housekeeping" rules inasmuch as they tell Reflect what backup files of each type should be removed after a specified number of that type accumulates, or after reaching a specified age. It will "work" but only you can decide whether it's "OK" in meeting your actual need and wishes. Will this work OK? and what would any long term users recommend? Stuart Full - 26 Weeks Differential - 4 Weeks Incremental - 14 Days I have now changed the "full" from 26 weeks to 6 weeks but left the other two the same. Since using I used one of the "default" backup plans, which was to keep the backups as follows.
HI Having used Macrium Reflect for about a week now I am very happy with my choice of back up software.