@chmichael - If you are using what's known as a "Forever Incremental" (my term), the option mentioned above will keep the initial FULL image from being merged forward in time (which is the most time consuming portion of the merge operation) after the merging starts. BUT, it will still become very time consuming if all you're doing is allowing many INCREMENTALs to accumulate. When you do this, the 1st INCREMENTAL will also start becoming very large over time.
The best approach to this is to schedule an occasional DIFFERENTIAL which allows the INCREMENTALS to start small once again as the merge moves along the time line. Of course those DIFFERENTIALS will also start getting large over time since they represent all changes since the original FULL was taken.
To manage this type of System creep over time, many users use what's called a GFS approach (Grandfather, Father, Son) to the imaging requirement. You first need to determine how much storage is required for your images, then determine how far back you need to protect your System (what's the earliest date I may ever need to restore my System to).
For me, I use the following... I don't need an image of my System any older than 2-mo. I really don't want to merge a lot of INCREMENTALS (the bigger they get, the longer the merge operation takes) so I decide that during that 2-mo period, I would like to be able to return to any day in the last 7-days, and any week since the 2-mo old FULL was made. I do this by setting up my scheduling to do a FULL on the first of each month at 5pm (setting my retention for FULLs at 2-mo), a DIFFERENTIAL on every Monday at 5pm (no retention setting), and an INCREMENTAL every night at 5pm (setting my retention to 7-days). This allows me to always have 2-3 months of FULLs, all DIFFERENTIALS during that period and the last 7-days of INCREMENTALs. When the retention is automatically managed and the 3rd FULL is deleted, all of its child DIFFERENTIALs are deleted as well. The System happily moves along on its own without needed intervention.
If you don't have much image storage, you can set the FULL retention management back to 1-mo, where it will happily keep from 1-2 months of imaging for you. If you are imaging to hard disks (HDDs), the merge process will be longer than imaging to SSDs, for instance. On my System, 7-days worth on INCs offer no real System load when it does its merging operation over those 7-days.
Hope this helps!
The best approach to this is to schedule an occasional DIFFERENTIAL which allows the INCREMENTALS to start small once again as the merge moves along the time line. Of course those DIFFERENTIALS will also start getting large over time since they represent all changes since the original FULL was taken.
To manage this type of System creep over time, many users use what's called a GFS approach (Grandfather, Father, Son) to the imaging requirement. You first need to determine how much storage is required for your images, then determine how far back you need to protect your System (what's the earliest date I may ever need to restore my System to).
For me, I use the following... I don't need an image of my System any older than 2-mo. I really don't want to merge a lot of INCREMENTALS (the bigger they get, the longer the merge operation takes) so I decide that during that 2-mo period, I would like to be able to return to any day in the last 7-days, and any week since the 2-mo old FULL was made. I do this by setting up my scheduling to do a FULL on the first of each month at 5pm (setting my retention for FULLs at 2-mo), a DIFFERENTIAL on every Monday at 5pm (no retention setting), and an INCREMENTAL every night at 5pm (setting my retention to 7-days). This allows me to always have 2-3 months of FULLs, all DIFFERENTIALS during that period and the last 7-days of INCREMENTALs. When the retention is automatically managed and the 3rd FULL is deleted, all of its child DIFFERENTIALs are deleted as well. The System happily moves along on its own without needed intervention.
If you don't have much image storage, you can set the FULL retention management back to 1-mo, where it will happily keep from 1-2 months of imaging for you. If you are imaging to hard disks (HDDs), the merge process will be longer than imaging to SSDs, for instance. On my System, 7-days worth on INCs offer no real System load when it does its merging operation over those 7-days.
Hope this helps!