No new full backup after specified n number of increments
I recently upgraded from Windows 7 Pro to Windows 10 Pro. I then continued with the same/old incremental backup. So the Full and a number of increments were under Windows 7 and then followed by a number of increments under Windows 10. All seemed to be good until the backup reached n=31 where it is supposed to do a new Full backup. I am now at n=33 and counting. I suspect that some register was reset when I upgraded but am wondering if anyone else has seen this problem and knows for sure what I should now expect. Will it recover proper operation after the count reaches the right number of increments following the Windows 10 upgrade or will it continue ito add increments forever? Do I need to abandon/stop this backup chain and start over? If so how do I do that without deleting the existing backup files?
Steve,
Thanks for the good advice. I have removed the old backup after running one more BU and removing all but the last chain. I then started a new backup with a new chain. I was unaware that changing the settings could reset the backup chain counter. That could also be the explanation of what happened to me as I adjusted the amount of storage allocated to the backup. I am wondering what you think is too long an incremental chain. I use n=30. To be safe I have another backup that makes a Full BU once a week because I was also a little worried about the long chain.
Ken
Ken,
The decision about the size of an incremental chain will depend on other factors, such as how often you are creating these backups, how much space you have on your backup target drive, and how vital are your backups should any single image be lost?
One other consideration is the time required to restore a full incremental version chain, i.e. if you have a chain with 1 full image and 30 incrementals, then every image has to be navigated in order to restore the system to the point as it was when the last image of the chain was created.
By comparison, if you have a differential version chain, then only the full and chosen (or last) differential images are required and have to be navigated to restore from.
In terms of automatic cleanup, the aging of a version chain does not commence until it is complete, which in essence is when the next full backup is created, at which point the prior version chain is 1 day old and not 31 or 32 days old as some users might believe based on when the initial full image was created. This means that if you set cleanup to remove old version chains after 7 days, then you will need sufficient space for the full chain (31 files) plus the next full plus 6 images before the space taken by the full chain is recovered.