How do I remove old backup files?
Hi Folks,
I initially created an incremental TI2016 Backup to run on Tuesdays at 14:00. I recently editited this backup to run on Thursdays at 14:00 but I now find that it has created a full backup for Thursday and has left all of my original backup files from the Tuesday backups. This is a bit worrying as these files are taking up a lot of space on my external HDD.
According to the documentation I can't just delete these files via Windows as they're registered on an internal DB and deleting them would cause errors. So, my question is; how can I remove these unwanted backup files?


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Hi Steve,
many thanks for replying to my question. As it stands at the moment my backup options state that version chains older than 7 days should be deleted. Can I assume here that when it says 'version chain older than 7 days' it means the age of latest file in that version chain? If this was that case then wouldn't my old backups disappear when the latest version chain backup file was older that 7 days?
Regarding the 'Store no more than X recent version chains' option, it's not set at the moment but the default value is 10 (for X). If it was set to anything othert than 1 then wouldn't that always retain my old backup files as I'd only have two backup chains, Tuesday's and Thursday's?
I admit I might very well have completely misunderstood what you wrote about the 'Store no more than X recent version chains' option. this is all very new to me.
Kind regards,
Robert
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Robert, if you use 'version chains older than 7 days' then the count for those 7 days does not start until the next version chain has been successfully started with a new full backup file. So if you leave a week inbetween making backups, that could be 14 days after the last backup file of the completed version chain was created as that is when the next new full backup gets created to start the 7 day count.
You can only choose the one option for automatic cleanup, so if you are using the 'older than 7 days' option, you cannot also use store no more than X at the same time.
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Hi Steve,
many thanks for your info regarding the 'version chains older than 7 days' option. It seems then, that the old unwanted backup files will eventually disappear as long as I keep diong weekly backups.
If I were to use the 'Store no more than X recent version chains' option, should I then set 'X' to 1 in order to remove preious backup files?
Also, on a slightly different subject, do you know if TI2016 backup files are compatible with TI2017? If I were to upgrade to TI2017 would I have to anything special regarding previous TI2016 backup files?
Kind regards,
Robert
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Robert, yes, your old backup files should be cleaned up by the automatic cleanup rules you have set already.
When using 'Store no more than X...' the main consideration is the amount of space needed to hold the X+1 version chains on your backup drive. If you were to set X = 1 then all older version chains would be removed once a new full backup was created, as that would then be the 1 version chain to be kept.
There should be no issue with ATIH 2017 reading your 2016 backup files. See KB 1689: Backup archive compatibility across different product versions which has the definitive statement from Acronis, but understand that this is really a statement of what Acronis has tested to be compatible, not necessarily what might still be compatible with the other versions that have not been tested! The table shows 2017 as being tested / compatible with 2016 & 2015 but we have had other users with older versions report that these were still OK.
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Hi Steve,
many thanks for all your info, I now know how to proceed.
Kind regards,
Robert
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