(01-03-2025, 07:44 AM)kikker05 Wrote: Ok thank you - that makes sense. I think where I (and others) may be hung up on is the fact that the retention policies for Full, Incremental, and Differential are able to float freely and independently from one another, which according to my understanding should not be possible.
In the above example of monthly full backups and daily incremental backups (so two lines added in the schedules window), how is it possible for a user to set the Incremental retention period to a duration longer than what is set for the Full retention? (An Incremental based on a Full can never outlast that Full backup).
On a different note, may I suggest implementing an option for an auto "Smart backup retention" - There would remain one backup for each of the last 7 days, one for each of the last 4 weeks, and one for each of the last 12 months. I think this could be accomplished with daily incremental backups (7 day retention), weekly differential (4 week retention), and monthly full (12 months retention).
I guess there are rules for "child" dependencies that the Devs expect the user to understand when it comes to GFS (Grandfather, Father, Son) retention schemes. Your suggestion for "Smart Backup Retention" is fine, but very few users will use what you suggest... too much storage (12-fulls... <Yikes!>). That's why they let you select what works for you. Personally, I use the following retention scheme... Full=2mo (1/month scheduled), Incremental=7days (12/day scheduled = 84). I allow the weekly DIFFs (1/week scheduled) to accumulate over the 2-mo period and let then prune with the FULLs. My System doesn't need anything older than that. I use "days" and "months" because I also use HBS as a snapshot/rollback System as well, allowing me to take many asynchronous (manual/unscheduled) images as needed. I do this when doing questionable software testing, Windows updates/upgrades, visiting questionable web sites and when I'm using the System as a HoneyPot for "badies" in the wild... a very useful feature.
Each user will have very different requirements.