Can I Schedule Deletion of Old Archives

I have a PC with four internal 1.5 TB drives and I am trying to setup Paragon Backup and Recovery 2011 Advanced Free for weekly scheduled backups. One drive is the system drive, one is a data drive and the other two are intended solely for backups. Both active drives have around 1.2 TB data so that each backup drive can only hold one backup image. What I would like to do is schedule a task that deletes any existing backup image immediately before initiating the backup of a particular disk. Otherwise, any scheduled backup will fail due to lack of available space on the backup drive. Can this be done with the Home version, and if so, how? I know I can do this manually, but this defeats the purpose of scheduled backups.

Thanks
Warc1

 

Try to uncheck the 'Generate unique names for scheduled backups' option in scheduled backup settings, this would overwrite previous backup each time you make a new one.

 

This apparently is not available in the Free version but is in the B&R 10 Home version.

In the Edit Settings menu there is an entry "Run during backup options" which allows you to run a program before taking snapshot, after the snapshot and at the completion of the backup process.

Never used this with Paragon but presumably you could setup a batch file with a suitable delete command to delete all files on the external. Only problem might be drive letters if the USB doesn't get the same one assigned each time.

I used this method on a competing product to delete the files in a folder that was used to contain decrypted files. This made sure no decrypted files were included in the image.

Do you actually have 1.2TB of data on each of the 2 non-backup disks? If so you might want to consider data re-organization especially if you are continually backing up files that don't change at all. I used to have a separate partition for the installation of large games like Flight Simulator so I wouldn't be imaging it each time I imaged C. The game files never changed so a one time backup was all I needed and I had the DVDs in case the backup didnt' work.

Have you considered incremental backups?

 

I'm looking for a replacement to my current imaging software and really like Paragon's solution, except for this apparent lack of built-in ability to delete old backups. I like to set a full backup at the first of each month followed by an incremental each week for the rest of the month. I only like to keep two chains available, so after the third month I like the first month to be deleted.

I am just writing to make sure I understand this ability is not built into the software? I don't want to be forced to write a batch job that runs afterward or anything similar. It seems odd this ability wouldn't be an option when the program is designed to run unattended backups. I'm specifically looking at Backup & Recovery 10 Suite.

I would like to mention that it is very refreshing to read through a forum and see normal questions being asked instead of thread after thread of posts regarding all kinds of buggy problems with the software!

 

I'm new to Paragon and I certainly can't tell you about what features exist in the Suite but the Paragon Scripting Language seems to be the mechanism used for clever tasks.

 

Yup, thanks - looks like that is the only solution. Sadly, it's a deal breaker for me. It seems odd the software would allow incremental and differential abilities, thereby qualifying it as a backup solution, but not allow an ability to "set it and forget it" due to ballooning backup space requirements.

I'll keep an eye on future releases because after reading the 200 page manual I am impressed with this software. Perhaps at some point common sense will kick in.

I'll also be watching for a scheduling ability that will work more appropriately with the built-in ability to schedule defrags in Win7... The defrag utility which comes w/ Win7 allows the user to defrag on a specific day of the month, to include the "last day." We all know the problems associated with incremental/differential backups with regard to defragging... But it appears Paragon doesn't allow you to set a schedule to correlate with Win7 degragging to ensure a defrag only occurs directly before a full backup, after the previously scheduled set of incremental backups.

 

In the Home edition, I use the cyclic feature and it works each time. I keep 14 days worth of full backups and never had to delete the 15th manually.

 

There's an answer! And it's almost there for me. From the manual it appears this only works with didfferential backups, not incremental, and there is no way to automaticaly start a full backup again at regular intervals. If I were to "set it and forget it" with cyclic backups after several months each differential backup would be HUGE.

Unless, that is, I'm missing SOMETHING ELSE!

 

This is the same question I am having.. Using the cyclic differential backup.. It looks like it makes one full backup.. and all other backups are differentials.
If it needs space it will delete the oldest differential.. well if you think about it after a year or two each differential will be about as big as the original full since a lot will have changed since the first full. I really wish you could specify how often to make a full.. I would do like a full on Monday.. and differentials all other days.

It may be able to be done with scripting.. but I am not that advanced yet to understand how to do it.

 

perhaps with the capsule feature.. have to do some more reading.