someone must have done this already

[fmpreusser]

for a small business I need to be able to a create daily backup where backups older then a week are of no use, so they can be overwritten/ deleted
I first tried a regular daily differential backup scheduled "when my computer shuts down". This worked fine but eventuallly the files will exceed the capacity of the harddrive unless manually deleted.
I then created 7 weekly full backup's one for each day, thinking that on Monday they start overwriting but I still have the last 6 days. The problem with this approach was the fact that you cannot schedule a backup on a given day and select "when my computer shuts down".
You must select a time, which is not practical since there is no fixed quitting time and if the database files are still in use the backup maybe incomplete.
I am hoping someone must have done something similar and can help me out.
Any help is appreciated
Thx
Fred

[foghorne]

Hi fmpreusser,

I hope I have not misunderstood your problem, but you could create a full backup once a week and then incrementals on each day. The next week the full is overwritten by the new full image and the incrementals are orphaned and will be overwritten by the subsequent incrementals run daily.

On your second point, despite being unable to choose the day and Shutdown, I believe it is possible to use the "shutdown" command from the post processing to shut your machine down after the backup has completed.


See this for shutting down or standing by:
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=136916


F.

Originally Posted by fmpreusser

for a small business I need to be able to a create daily backup where backups older then a week are of no use, so they can be overwritten/ deleted
I first tried a regular daily differential backup scheduled "when my computer shuts down". This worked fine but eventuallly the files will exceed the capacity of the harddrive unless manually deleted.
I then created 7 weekly full backup's one for each day, thinking that on Monday they start overwriting but I still have the last 6 days. The problem with this approach was the fact that you cannot schedule a backup on a given day and select "when my computer shuts down".
You must select a time, which is not practical since there is no fixed quitting time and if the database files are still in use the backup maybe incomplete.
I am hoping someone must have done something similar and can help me out.
Any help is appreciated
Thx
Fred

[Xpilot]

Originally Posted by fmpreusser

for a small business I need to be able to a create daily backup where backups older then a week are of no use, so they can be overwritten/ deleted
I first tried a regular daily differential backup scheduled "when my computer shuts down". This worked fine but eventuallly the files will exceed the capacity of the harddrive unless manually deleted.
I then created 7 weekly full backup's one for each day, thinking that on Monday they start overwriting but I still have the last 6 days. The problem with this approach was the fact that you cannot schedule a backup on a given day and select "when my computer shuts down".
You must select a time, which is not practical since there is no fixed quitting time and if the database files are still in use the backup maybe incomplete.
I am hoping someone must have done something similar and can help me out.
Any help is appreciated
Thx
Fred

If you are writing you backup images to a second internal drive you could create a TI secure zone there. Size it to take your six whole images and the recycling would be taken care of.

When making your schedule select "When my computer shuts down" then further down the same column the square box "Once a day".

The first part definitely works as I use it myself. The second part should work but I have not tried it out.

Xpilot.

[Xpilot]

Originally Posted by Xpilot

If you are writing you backup images to a second internal drive you could create a TI secure zone there. Size it to take your six whole images and the recycling would be taken care of.

When making your schedule select "When my computer shuts down" then further down the same column the square box "Once a day".

The first part definitely works as I use it myself. The second part should work but I have not tried it out.

Xpilot.

I have just tried out the second part by editing an existing task and also by creating a new task. Neither worked. Sorry about that.

Xpilot

[fmpreusser]

thx for the quick response, looks like I am not the only one sitting at the computer all the time,
foghorn, I will try your suggestion of the weekly backup with increments, I am not sure how the orphans get overwritten unless the file numbering of the increments starts with xxx(1).tib aagian when a new backup is created.
Also worked with Pre/Post Commands, could not make it work with DOS command but batchfile worked. I downloaded the AutoIt file and play with it.

xpilot, I am not sure I understand everything about the secure zone, need to read up on it. Acronis documentation is not wonderful.

Many thx!!

[TheWeaz]

“I am not sure how the orphans get overwritten unless the file numbering of the increments starts with xxx(1).tib aagian when a new backup is created”

That is, indeed, what happens.

[fmpreusser]

I tried the solution posted by foghorn, no success. One of my criteria is to have at any time at least 3 complete copies ( I [picked a week for convenionce), so when I create a new full backup overwriting the last one, I have only the backup just created because the orphans have no more value.

I looked at the pre/post commands, I don't think that would work if the computer is shut down by the user and the time is set for later then the manual shutdown.
One other idea is to create two directories week1 and week2 writing full backup and incremental to week1 directory, and the next week to week2 directory. In week3 I go back to week1 and all files will be overwritten.
I just don't know how Acronis handles this two week increment if I have a failure of any kind and do not reset the two week increment manually??
Any opinion on that??

[foghorne]

Originally Posted by fmpreusser

I tried the solution posted by foghorn, no success. One of my criteria is to have at any time at least 3 complete copies ( I [picked a week for convenionce), so when I create a new full backup overwriting the last one, I have only the backup just created because the orphans have no more value.

Hi fmpreusser,

I currently use a rolling backup which gives me a backup for each day over the last month. The simple answer is to extent the above plan to use more subdirectories. See :

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showp...78&postcount=4

F.

[fmpreusser]

as it often is your proposed solution gave me the idea for the following approach I was able to implement successfully. Thx!!!

I created two backup directories:
PresentWeek, LastWeek
and two backup processes.

A weekly full or incremental backup to PresentWeek that includes a pre command to copy everything from PresentWeek to LastWeek

A daily incremental backup running when my computershuts down

This works like your rotating schedule where " when a full backup runs in PresentWeek it orpans the encrementals the next time an incremental (daily) runs it overwrites the previous first incremental"

thx for all the inputs!!