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old backups are not deleting

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I tried two methods to set the Acronis backup 2018 to delete old backups (save 1 copy, delete copies older than 7 days).  With either setting, when I look at the backup folder, there are still multiple old copies saved 3, 4, 5 weeks later.  How do I save just one (1) current backup?  I understand that there needs to be room for two backups, but after the new one runs, I want the old one to be deleted.

Thanks!

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Steve, welcome to these public User Forums.

The best / easiest method to use for 'Automatic cleanup' is 'Store no more than X recent version chains', where X is the number you want to keep and X+1 is the how many backup chains you have space to store on the backup location.

If you are making only Full backups, then X is easy to calculate as it is the number of files to keep.

If you are making Incremental or Differential backups, then X is the number of chains to keep, where a chain contains 1 x Full plus the number of Incr or Diff files to create before creating a further new Full backup.

So, if you say to store no more than 1 recent version chain, the oldest chain or file will be deleted only after the next new Full backup has been created successfully.

This is where the other option of deleting version chains older than 7 days become more difficult for users to understand, as the 7 days does not start counting until after the next new Full backup has been created successfully - NOT 7 days from when the older files were created!

One final note of caution, it is known that making changes to the settings on the Backup scheme page can cause the cleanup counts to be reset, so once you have it setup and working, it should be left alone.  If changes are needed then it is best to create a new backup task.