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Backup options and retention policy

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I should like some clarification concerning backup and retention policy. My PC hard drive currently holds around 400GB of data, whilst my external HD containing the backup files holds 1TB.

I have just bought Acronis True Image 2015, having previously used Storagecraft ShadowProtect Desktop. My backup schedule had been to create a new full backup on the 1st of each month, followed by daily incrementals, with a retention policy that automatically deleted the last but one backup chain immediately prior to the next one being created (there is only room on my external HD to accommodate 2 full backups + 30 days-worth of incrementals each). That allows me to restore from any point in time over the previous 2 months, which is good enough for me.

However, if my understanding of how differential backups work is correct - ie that only the full and the most recent differential backup file is required for a restore - I was wondering if it would not be better to create a full backup at the beginning of each month, followed by daily differentials with a retention policy that only keeps the latest of those, ie having a clean-up policy that automatically deletes the previous differential file after the latest has been created. Thus my external HD would only ever need to accommodate 2 full backups and 2 differentials.

Would that scenario allow a restore to be made from any point in time over the previous 2 months, and is it something that can be configured with the menu options available in Acronis TI 2015?

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For differential backups the FULL and AN DIFFERENTIAL version meaning that only one differential version need be chosen for a restore process. Your current scheme allows for a restore at any point in time based on a daily differential backup. If you change to a keep 1 differential version then you will only have the FULL and the available differential version/s for restore. Thus this would not be an any point in time scenario unless I do not understand you correctly. Another way to say this would be that if you for example wished to restore the full and the fourth differential made in the month but you are now on the sixth differential thus having the forth differential been deleted you could not restore to that forth version.

Here is an illustrated example:

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2015/index.html#1…

Thanks. I had seen that example, but it still wasn't clear to me, as it suggests that the latest differential is effectively the sum of all the preceding ones, having stored all the page changes made since the last full backup. In other words, it could be regarded as a concatenation of the equivalent incremental file chain. Perhaps naively, I assumed that each page change stored on the latest differential would retain some kind of date stamp, making it possible to specify which point in time the restore should go back to. I take it, then, that isn't the case?

Correct.