Proposal for improved automatic cleanup of differential backups
While the existing automatic cleanup rules make sense for incremental backups, I think there could be some improvement in the rules for differential backups.
I suggest these new rules be added to the choices for differentials:
[] Cleanup differentials in a version chain (a check box, if checked the next two options appear)
O Delete differentials older than X days
O Store no more than X recent differentials on a version chain
Since for recovery only one differential is needed with the Full backup, this allows a greater number of differentials to be written before running a new Full backup, without all the space being taken or the performance hit by not having to do so many full backups. Because differentials always get bigger, a lot of space can be wasted.
As an example, one can do a Full backup once a month, but only a week's worth of differentials need be saved.
Additionaly, I could envision an option to create a new version chain when the size of a differential reaches X percent of the Full version (X being something close to 100% makes sense).
The idea here is to better balance space, performance and reliability.
Thoughts?
@Bobbo_3C0X1 my recollection is that the combination incremental/differential is available in some form in Backup 12.5. So it presumably would be relatively easy to import the code into ATI. As a set-and-forget solution it looks like a reasonable approach. Not sure how Acronis see the demarcation between features in ATI and features in Backup 12.5; they are directed at different markets.
Ian
Agreed. I'd hope they also consider competitor features though too. Macrium has been offering this setup for quite some time now as well and it is a solid backup scheme. Of course, both products have their positives and negatives, but when certain features are available in one and not another, the scales may tip in favor of the other for some. Macrium is also offering ransomeware protection for the Macrium backup image files (not whole PC... yet?).
I'd also just like to see a "run full backup now" button at some point.
Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote:I'd also just like to see a "run full backup now" button at some point.
+1 to that!
Ian
Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote:I'd also just like to see a "run full backup now" button at some point.
+1 here too.
I'd call it "Start new chain" though. To me that's clearer but I realize it may not be to others.
Good point Bruno. It is important that users will find it easy to understand what the button does.
Ian
Guys, thank you for bringing up these ideas! The following feature requests have been opened\updated
TI-176473 Add new auto-cleanup options for differential backups
TI-95638 Add GFS (Grandfather-Father-Son) backup scheme
Great. Thanks, Ekaterina.
Bruno, Bob, Ian... Brilliant Ideas !
Steve F.
Great news Ekaterina! Hopefully they consider them! These would be awesome feature updates in my book.