I think you will find that subsequent full backups will take just a
little longer than the incrementals.  New full backups will only
transfer changed files rather than a complete new backup.  The
difference is in how the client identifies files to backup. With an
incremental, files are 1st checked based on last modification date and
then based on file signature.  This avoids a lot of signature work but
can lead to missed files due to unarchiving activities (live
extracting contents of zip files) that create files with modification
times earlier than the last full. The full backup selects every file
but then subjects it to signatute checks to see if the file has
actually changed.  Only files that fail signature match are actually
changed.  The signature is checked against the pool,  so it will only
fail when this file has never been backed up by this particular
instance on BackupPC.

On 1/19/09, Nick Smith <nick.smith79 AT gmail DOT com> wrote:
> I use backuppc to backup several windows servers across the internet.
> Some of which are rather large and on slow internet connections.
> With frequent disconnects or other random errors it has taken almost a
> month to make a full backup of one client, but it finally happened
> (40gigs of data, exchange etc).
>
> My question is that,  since it takes so long to make a full backup and
> the incrementals go rather quickly, is it safe to do a full backup
> every
> 6 months or so and do incrementals every day?  How would this impact
> restoring files?  If im doing incremental backups everyday and they
> need to restore their exchange DB for some reason, would i still be
> able to get it with only 1 full backup and the rest incrementals?
> these are
> all level 1 backups. From what ive read level one backups backup
> changed from the last level 0 full backup.  Im currently keeping 2
> weeks of
> incrementals.  What if i wanted to only get a full every 12 months and
> just use incrementals every day?  Am i still covered?
>
> I just dont want to get into a situation where i "think" i have a good
> backup and then they actually need to restore something and i dont
> have
> adequate data to restore.
>
> Is there a better option to accomplish this?  Im using rsyncd on the
> windows servers and have pre/post scripts that launch a volume shadow
> of the drives to backup, then i use exclude/include in backuppc to
> tell it what to backup.  Ive slimmed the backup down as much as
> possible
> to only get important files.  They are in a rural area and the
> internet speed is as fast as they can get it.
>
> Thanks for any help and/or advice.
>
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-- 
Sent from my mobile device

Jonathan Craig

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