Incremental Backup: Which files to Keep, or Delete?

Infopackets Reader Jim 'jhg' writes:

" Dear Dennis,

I am using Acronis True Image [to backup my operating system and personal files] -- great product. I did a full backup and it worked like a charm. I also did five incremental backups. Question: should I delete incremental backup numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and save the fifth, or do I save all of them? "

Reminder: we have a 50% sale on Disk Director Suite available through Infopackets.com which expires on August 31st, 2009. Also offered is Acronis True Image at 15% off. Click the respective link for more detail.

My Response:

To quickly answer your question: you would save all the files as all files are needed to restore your backup.

Now, allow me to expand my answer and to clarify some techy talk for new readers:

The term 'incremental backup' is a type of backup method where an original backup is created, and then successive backups are made at a later time. The successive backups contain only new data that was updated or added since the previous backup.

The advantage to this method is that it takes less space to store each successive backup, rather than creating an entirely new backup from start each and every time you want to backup your data.

To answer your question: the best way to maintain an incremental backup is to delete the entire backup set (including the first, original backup file) once a week or once every two weeks [or how ever often you see fit] so that the incremental backups don't span forever.

Example:

• Do your FIRST incremental backup on Monday; store it in an empty folder.
   
• Do successive incremental backups on Wednesday, and Friday.
   
• On Sunday, move all backup files to a folder called "Old backup". This essentially empties out your backup folder where you store your backup files.
   
  • Optionally: you can move all backup files to external media [or secondary partition]. Be sure to delete the backup set from the original backup folder.
     
• When the process repeats again on Monday, a new incremental backup set will be created from scratch.

Using this method you will have a maximum of 3 backup files per week, otherwise the incremental backup set could span indefinitely.

This methodology works excellent if you use Disk Director Suite to partition your drive -- instead of moving to external media, you could choose to move it to another folder on your secondary partition, for example.

Reminder: we have a 50% sale on Disk Director Suite available through Infopackets.com which expires on August 31st, 2009. Also offered is Acronis True Image at 15% off. Click the respective link for more detail.