Incremental backups

[voicepipes]

Hi folks,

Everyday I have the "backup.app" set to backup my mail, documents folder and system settings.

I notice that the folder on the HD it saves to made one large file and is also full of incremental backups by date. At what point can I begin to delete some of these files? Do they all have to stay in case I need to "rescue" this data? I have well over a year of file dates now.

TIA for the advice.

Jeff

 

[louishen]

If you don't need all those old files any more, you can always move them to a temp folder, initiate a fresh new back-up and once done delete the temp folder

I am nit sure what would happen if you delete some files

 

[MacsWork]

If you are satisfied that you are not missing any data, nor is any of your data corrupted, feel free to delete the backup job along with all of the backups. Then recreate the job and you will get a full backup and then the incremental jobs will begin accruing daily after that.

I find Backup.app to be simple to setup, but not nearly as granular as I would like. I loved Deja Vu and am now trying out Synchronize Pro.

 

[voicepipes]

If you are satisfied that you are not missing any data, nor is any of your data corrupted, feel free to delete the backup job along with all of the backups. Then recreate the job and you will get a full backup and then the incremental jobs will begin accruing daily after that.

I find Backup.app to be simple to setup, but not nearly as granular as I would like. I loved Deja Vu and am now trying out Synchronize Pro.

Question, what do you mean by granular?

Thanks for the tip also.

Jeff

 

[MacsWork]

There are no other options for your backup.

The simple act of scheduling a weekly full backup job that overwrites the previous weeks full backup. Or even expiring backup jobs. Even TimeMachine has expiring backup albeit not user specified.

I tried Backup.app because it came with my .Mac account and was an Apple app. However, even though it did backup and restore my data, it didn't provide me the granular usage of other backup applications. I find disk ti disk backups require jobs to have expiration thresholds or guess what,...the jobs will start to fail from lack of disk space.

I run OS X Server at home and found that the built in TimeMachine backup services in Leopard server were less than desirable and still in their infancy.

I find the directory synchronization apps like Deja Vu and Sychronize Pro are ideal for most users. They usually provide at least a week of archiving and also support network drives. Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper say they support network drives, but In my real world trials they were very slow and failed frequently. bruClone and bruLE are pay products that work great on external HD's but not network drives.

If you're using Backup with your iDisk, keep in mind that all data traffic as well as data storage is NOT encrypted.