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Cleaning Up 2013 vs.

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I need help.  My 1 TB HDD is filling up and I need to know how to delete some of the backups and leave the full one.

Would it be easier to delete the whole thing and start over again?

Talk to me like a child so I can understand what i need to do.

 

I have searched the help file in this version but can't find out exactly what I need to do to create space for updates.

 

Thanks

Tom

 

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Hello Tom,

What type of backup images have you been creating on your 1TB HDD?

If you have been creating Incremental images, then have you defined a limit on how many should be created before a new Full backup is created?  You can identify Incremental images because they will have _inc_ in the file name shown in Windows Explorer on your HDD.

If you have been creating Differential images, then these are easier to manage as you can safely delete unwanted differential images so long as you keep the initial Full image that these were based on.  You can identify Differential images because these will have _diff_ in the file name shown in Windows Explorer.

If you have only been creating Full images, then you can again safely delete any older, unwanted full images. Look for _full_ in the file name.

When deleting Incremental images, then it is best to remove the complete version chain for these, that means all the images which follow the same version number in the file name.

For example: An incremental version chain might look like below:

Backup_full_b1_s1_v1.tib  - the initial full backup image.

Backup_inc_b1_s2_v1.tib  - the first incremental image

Backup_inc_b1_s3 / s30_v1.tib - a further set of incremental images using s3, s4, s5 etc up to s30.

Backup_full_b2_s1_v1.tib - a second full backup image starting a new version chain.

Backup_inc_b2_s2_v1.tib - the first incremental image of this new version chain.

A differential version chain looks very similar except _inc_ is replaced by _diff_ in the above example.

One final recommendation, after you have done any manual cleanup / removing of images, run a Validation of each of your backup tasks that created these images so that the deletions are picked up and registered in the Acronis database files.