Setting to keep X number of backups

[ghendric]

There needs to be a setting for the backup feature to set how many backup files to keep.

[spwolf]

@ghendric Hello,

we would hate to have to delete your backups. Since backups are in form of archives, quite possibly something else can happen to old backup (delete, virus, hdd error) and we automatically deleting it could cause an issue.

Did you check on doing incremental backups? For instance strategy could be to do full backup on Sunday and incremental backup on every other day. That would create much less backups (in size) and it would still be very safe.

Thank you!

[ghendric]

@spwolf Well, I’m kind of limited on the amount of space i have to back up to. Also, I don’t need to keep every backup. My only option right now is to either babysit the backup location and delete unnecessary backups,which i’d rather not do, or write a windows service to monitor the backup location and delete them that way. It would be nice to have that setting just in case it was needed. I was using a backup utility called Cobian but it seems to have become broken with the latest Windows 10 update and that app hasn’t progressed in development in the past few years. Reinstalling it didn’t fix it either.

[spwolf]

@ghendric said in Setting to keep X number of backups:

@spwolf Well, I’m kind of limited on the amount of space i have to back up to. Also, I don’t need to keep every backup. My only option right now is to either babysit the backup location and delete unnecessary backups,which i’d rather not do, or write a windows service to monitor the backup location and delete them that way. It would be nice to have that setting just in case it was needed. I was using a backup utility called Cobian but it seems to have become broken with the latest Windows 10 update and that app hasn’t progressed in development in the past few years. Reinstalling it didn’t fix it either.

did you check out my idea of using incremental backups together with full ones? Incrementals will only compress updated files.

Or is it not applicable to your own situation (ie lots of always updated large files).

[ghendric]

@spwolf Yes but won’t incremental backups make a lot of backups as well? If it does, i could still run out of disk space.

[spwolf]

@ghendric said in Setting to keep X number of backups:

@spwolf Yes but won’t incremental backups make a lot of backups as well? If it does, i could still run out of disk space.

only changed files will be backed up. Copy the script, and then edit it to be incremental and see after a day how much it backup up?

[ghendric]

@spwolf Ok, I’ll try that and see how it goes… still would be nice to have a feature that will allow the user to specify how many backups to keep… just sayin’…

[spwolf]

@ghendric said in Setting to keep X number of backups:

@spwolf Ok, I’ll try that and see how it goes… still would be nice to have a feature that will allow the user to specify how many backups to keep… just sayin’…

yeah, please let me know how it works out for you specifically.

I will write something about deleting these in the future… but it has to be done properly, I would like it to save size, date of the backups and then compare to what is on disk before it deletes last 5.

We dont want to get into situation of something else modifying the files (by accident) and then Backup deleting those without understanding that the files might not be the same as original backup. So some kind of simple database with backup check, before we delete them for you.

[ghendric]

The incremental backup is creating a bunch of little archive files that contain folders with nothing in them. It is getting what has changed but navigating through the archive is a bit cumbersome when looking for what has changed. I think at some point there are going to be too many archives to look through if i need to restore something. How does the join archives functionality work? Is that a merge or does one archive take presidence over another?

[spwolf]

@ghendric said in Setting to keep X number of backups:

The incremental backup is creating a bunch of little archive files that contain folders with nothing in them. It is getting what has changed but navigating through the archive is a bit cumbersome when looking for what has changed. I think at some point there are going to be too many archives to look through if i need to restore something. How does the join archives functionality work? Is that a merge or does one archive take presidence over another?

It is merge but I am not sure about same files and how would it pick which one gets merged.

There is classic view that shows you only files and path is a field, instead of default explorer view. This will help a lot I think: