Working Cyclic Backup and Synthetic backup together

I use Paragon Drive Backup Professional 9.0 on a pc (Vista Home Premium), that runs a cyclic (differential type) backup on a schedule three times a week. It is setup to keep 4 images, if the specified amount of disk space allows. The base image is about 60gb.

It has been working fine for weeks, and as expected, the differential size has grown now to about 10gb in size. Of course, it will continue to grow, until I do something about it.

My goal is to automate this as much as possible. I know that one of the purposes of a synthetic backup is to merge the base with the latest differential, but in looking through (and actually running it), I didn't see a way to specify the destination on the synthetic in such a way that the next time the cyclic backup runs it would recognize the "new" base image (created from the synthetic), and do differentials from that.

Could someone walk me through that process?

Is it necessary to modify the script file to make the cyclic recognize the base created from the synthetic backup?

Do you have to run the wizard again to setup a new script when you create a new base?

 

Hello Crandy2,

There's a couple of ways to achieve full automation and it depends on how much additional space you have to work with. The reason your differential backup will not recognize the new base image because of the new file name.

An easier way to do this is not to perform the synthetic, but rename the base image at the end of the week before the new differential recycles. Cyclic backup will automatically create a new base image if the existing base image is nowhere to be found.

End of first week: Base + Diff(3), rename base image
Beginning of 2nd week: program creates new base image, ignores the three Diff(3) and write new ones as it goes along.

You are still fault tolerant although the program thinks you don't have a working set of cyclic backups. You just have to rename the old base image to its former name, and perform the restore.

In your scheduled task, right click to edit script, and add "EXEC FILE BATFILE.BAT" before the main functions.

In your bat file, it should something look like this.
// base1.pbf (old base image, with no sets of diff)
// base2.pbf (current base image, with sets of diff)


del X:/path/base1.pbf //first week, this is nonexistent
rename X:/path/base1.pbf base2.pbf

When the cyclic backup cycles, it doesn't see a base1.pdf and creates a new base image(base2.pbf).

Of course you could always manually do this.
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The alternative without using a bat file:

Create a cyclic backup with 3 differentials
Create a 2nd cyclic backup with "base type" and use the same name as the original cyclic base image and I would make two sets in "base type" so at least you always have one good base image secured.

 

I also want to add that because the program will write a new base image instead of a differential, you will have one less differential total. So if you set the number to 5: base image , new base image, diff, diff, diff, it will give you the same amount of backups + 1 base redundancy (1 week apart).

 

Hi crandy2,

You might also have a look at the procedure outlined in the thread linked below. There are step-by-step instructions for creating a "cyclic like" set of backups with alternating base images that overwrite and reset the differentials once a week. It is also not limited to just one partition as the Cyclic tasks are.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=251836

 

Wow, this is great !! I believe I can implement this just fine.

One final question, is there any way to alter the content of the email that gets generated at the end of the backup? I would like to include the size of the differential (or base).

Also, any way to generate an error email? Right now I know it didn't run if I don't get an email, just wondered if there is any way for me to generate one that had a little detail.

Thanks for the help.