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Erasing Uneccessary Differential Backups

Updated: 21 May 2010 | 2 comments
Todd Payne's picture
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I run a weekly full backup on Friday nights and differential backups nightly Monday - Thursday.  I use the Archive Bit to determine what files to back up instead of modified time.  I use backup to  disk folders and have a folder for every day of the week.  What I want to do is keep two days of differentials.  I want to keep two days because I start and go home earlier than the most of the staff, and I am often asked arrive Wednessday and find a note on my monitor asking me for a "clean" copy of the file a user mangled Tuesday afternoon.  So I want to erase  the Monday differential backup to disk file after the Wednessday night differntial job completes successfully.  This saves a little disk space and allows me to go home early.  I do this every morning manually now,  but I would like to automate the task with a post job command that only runs if the job is successful. I would also like to erase all the old differntials after a successful full back up is this possible, and can someone point me to the right place so I can learn how to do this.

I tried searching this forum before I I posted this question. I must be doing something wrong as I can't be the first one who has thought about Erasing Uneccessary Differential Backups when using a Backup to disk files as the primary backup media.

Thanks
Todd

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OneManITShop's picture
21
Aug
2009
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scheduled task

since you have a separate folder per day all you have to do is schedule a post backup task after the Wed job completed successfully to delete all files from folder Mon
make sure you select 'Run post-command only if pre-command is successful'

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OneManITShop
read my blog at OneManITShop.blogspot.com

MitchR's picture
21
Aug
2009
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Media sets

You might try using Media Sets.  Create a media Set, call it "Full Backups", and set your full backups to use those tapes.  Then make a second media set, call it "Diff Backups", and set the differential backups to use those.

You'll want to set Media Set Properties different on the "Diff Backups" one.  For example, set the Overwrite Protection to 7 days if you do weekly fulls - and don't sare about the daily differentials after a week.

 

If tape space is that tight, consider doing diffs to disk and only fulls to tape.

 

 

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