Differential Backups

I'm a newbie to TI so please bare with me. I recently upgraded from TI 9 to TI 10. I use an external USB hard drive for my TI backup files. I have a full system backup that is scheduled for weekly Differential backups. I also have a backup of Documents and Settings that has daily Differntial backups at shutdown. I noticed that I now have a list of backups numbered (2) through (6) under the original Docs and Settings backup. Question: For example, if restoration of Docs and Settings only requires the original and latest Differential backups, is it safe to delete (in my case) Differential backups (2) though (5) keeping just the original and no (6)?

 

Hello Skipper,

Don't know whether it still applies to TI 10.0 but there was a problem with TI 9.0 in that you only needed the full image plus one differential in order to carry out a restore but required the full and all differentials if you wanted to merely validate the image.

Regards

 

Thanks for the fast reply. TI 10 has the same "glitch" as the validate glitch in TI 9 as you mentioned. I deleted all of my Docs and Sets backups from the external drive and ran a full backup; scheduling it to run everyday at PC shutdown. At the first try it only took 10 min. runtime for a complete backup. So...I've decided to not go for any Incremental or Differential Backups. Is there anything wrong with this concept?

Thanks,

Skipper

 

Skipper,

I run daily full images of my O/S partition, and am convinced it's the best way to go, especially with a short run time like yours. I had mine set up to run once a day at Shutdown, but changed it to a scheduled time, only because anything that called for a reboot would trigger the backup task.

EDIT: To be clear, the task would only run once a day, not at each reboot, but once run would not run again when I shut down for the night.


CatFan

 

Thanks for that insight CatFan. I was thinking about changing my daily backup task from lunchtime to closedown. So I will stick with the devil I know. I also do not like the idea of a daily backup being triggered by the first reboot of the day when one expects it to be done at shut down .
I don't think this misbehaviour can be classed as a bug but more as a well intentioned facility not always working as expected.

Xpilot

 

Xpilot,
I don't see it as a bug either. The first time I rebooted and it started to run a backup, my thought was, "well, sure, that's what it's supposed to do".

CatFan