This might be a silly question, but our staff lawyer is asking whether it is possible to delete files or folders from our backup jobs that we have already run. We backup a months worth of information, Full backups every weekend with differential backups during the week. Thank you in advance for you time helping me!
Not from a tape directly, no you cannot.
You either erase the entire tape, or not backup the data you want an ultra-low retention on.
I have a customer that doesn't backup exchange and users have a 30day retention in their mailboxes. All they use is Exchange 2010 with DAG. The Exch and storage admin love this policy.
You cannot delete individual files or mail from a backup set whether it is on tape or on disk. I hope that your lawyer knows what he/she is asking for. Deleting a file from a backup is equivalent to shredding a document.
Thanks for the replies! I figured this would be the answer. Our lawyer is asking this in regards to Non Disclosure Agreements, the section called Return/Destroy. We might be obliged to destroy our backups if we have such data that is covered in an NDA on our backups. But, in the future, I am going to set an exclusion for a particular folder, that we will setup, so that it wont backup with our regular backup schedule.
