4 Week backup retention - recycle vs normal

[qsstefan]

We're trying to figure out how to setup our local network backup to work.

 

The goal is to have a weekly backup for 4 weeks and then recycle and redo a full backup.

 

It seem however that the recycle option will actually not only delete the existing backup files, but initiate a new backup right after. So if we were to schedule the recycle of the media on the 4th week, how would we prevent the weekly backup from starting at the same time?

 

I would've imagined that the recycle process would simply delete the backup files and wait for the next in line backup to complete a full backup.

 

 

So the main question is - if a weekly backup is scheduled at 8 PM - and every 4th week we want the media recycled, when do we schedule the recycle so we don't conflict with the regularly scheduled backup.

 

We would appreciate any suggestions.

[blm14]

Sounds like what you want is "grooming" and not "recycling"

[mlts22]

Recycling completely zeros out the backup set, just like removing it, deleting all the files and recreating it.

 

I'm guessing you want to create a grooming script that runs periodically on the backup set to remove unneeded snapshots. You can do this under the "manage scripts" option.

[tshaffer]

This is the backup cycle I have setup on Windows XP and it works great. I can't get it to work on Windows Vista, but that's another story.

 

I originally tried grooming the backup sets, but they just kept growing in size and gobbling up tons of space on my NAS. My backups are for disaster recovery, not archival purposes, and I don't need to restore back beyond four weeks.

 

I have four backup sets, one backup set runs each week, Sunday through Friday. On Saturday, the Recycle back for that set runs, zeroing out the backup set and performing a full backup again.

 

To answer your question on how to keep the normal backup and the recycle backup from conflicting, just schedule the normal back to run on all days that the recycle backup does not run on and only schedule the recycle backup to run when the the normal backup is not running.

 

Example: RedNormalBackup set scheduled to run Sunday-Friday, 12:00 AM, every 4 weeks. RedRecycleBackup scheduled to run on Saturday only, 12:00 AM, every 4 weeks. The other backup sets are setup similarly.