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How frequently to do full backup and keep version chains?

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I have recently converted from Ghost to True Image 2013. Ghost did a monthly full backup and a daily incremental backup. This approach served me well, and am looking for the best way with True Image.

From the TI documentation it wants to make a full backup every week and keep it for six months. That seems excessive. I'm inclined to create a full after every 30 incremental versions and delete version chains after 90 days. Is this a bad idea?

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That sounds inadequate to me. Each user may have his/her own preference for frequency of full backup and tolerance for system and data loss. The two schedules you mentioned both sound too infrequent for me. I want full disk mode backups much more frequently, several times per week. You must decide how much you value having a recent stand-alone full disk backup.

A task for Incremental or Differential will always begin with a full backup. That is necessary, as that becomes the baseline.

For an Incremental task, after the first full backup, subsequent backups will be incremental, each one based on changes since the previous Incremental backup, all the way back to the second backup being incremental based on changes since the full backup. As such, you need all links in the chain, all incremental backups right back to and including the first full backup, in order to Restore.

For a Differential task, after the first full backup, subsequent backups will be differential, each one based on changes since the first full backup. To restore, you would need just any Differential and the Full backup on which it is based.

You should not allow an incremental chain to become too long. An incremental restore depends upon every incremental in the chain being valid, including the original full. It's better to limit each chain to just a few incrementals, followed by a fresh full backup to start a new chain.

You should validate backups periodically. That would alert you much if the full backup were missing or unreadable.