Quick one: can I delete "old" backups?

I am running a differential backup at 3pm every day ad the archive folder is getting full.

Today I ran a full backup with the intention of deleting the "old" full, and "old" differential backups.

Is this acceptable, and can I just delete those files leaving the "new" full and any "new" differentials? Ie., does the program know that it's doing a differential on the last full backup?

ATI 11 backing up on a USB external HD.

 

if you have verified your backups, and are aware that you wont have anything older than today "restorable" you can do it.

Why dont you go for incrementals instead of differentials? you could have more slipping days of backup, and insert a FULL Backup job between incrementals?

 

Thanks for the reply.

I am not very well up on the theory and practice of backing up, even of a home set-up, but am a bit leery of incrementals. Surely each incremental has to be accessed as well as the full backup if a restore is made? In which case the potential for error would be increased purely by the number involved?

A differential presumably would, together with the original "full", be accessed only once: the latest one?

I haven't yet deleted the "old" full and differentials, so in the archive folder there are these plus today's full and, in a few days' time, several more differentials. If I do a restore without deleting the "old" ones, does the program ignore these and just reference the latest ones?

TG for this forum: I emailed a query to Acronis on the 11th and had no reply!

 

Part of the "thoery" of backups is that old backups can sometimes be very important. For example, if a virus has infected your computer and is damaging files but you are not aware of it. All current backups are both infected and the files are damaged. However, an old backup will have clean copies of everything up to that date. A failing hard drive can also cause file damge which is not recognized until it has gotten quite bad.

So, it's smart to keep some old backups but not the differentials associated with them. In general, problems such as the ones I mentioned get recognized within three months, so keeping a three or four month old backup, a two month old backup, a one month old backup plus the current backup with differentials would be excellent practice.

If you don't have that much room, then keep the three or four month old backup and the current one with differentials.

 

Yes, that's a good idea. Would stop total disaster if it happened at the wrong time.

 

Hello Wol,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

Please notice that if you're not using Acronis Backup Locations, and chose a different name for the new full backup, then you will need to recreate your differential backups schedule.

Could you please let us know your Acronis request number (e.g. [Acronis #123456]) which was sent to you in autoreply to your letter? We will find out how the investigation of your issue is going. If you have not received an autoreply then please send us a Private Message containing your e-mail address.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

Actually, since I received no reply to my query and find that TI 11 isn't exactly user-friendly I asked for my money back a few days ago (citing the 30 day period). I haven't received any reply to *that* either!