BE 2010 - FULL vs INCREMENTAL backups

[fed1999]

Hi, I know there is a lot of info out there on the difference between FULL, DIFF and INCREMENTAL backups, however, I just wanted to clarify something for our setup here. 

Here is a little bit of background on our setup:

We have a large number of databases (1600+) for which we do a FULL backup for (in SQL) on Sundays and DIFFs Monday through Saturday.  The backup file names are always unique (contain a timestamp), and the backup files from the week before are purged automatically.  Now when it comes to putting those backups on tape, we used to do FULL backup in Backup Exec every day.  We are thinking of switching to INCREMENTAL tape backups (as sometimes we get manual backups in our folders, that get backed up, so we just want to back up these manual files once and thats it).  So to summarize, the files that go on our tapes are always new.

Now here is an excerpt from a knowledge base article from Symantec:

The advantage of a Differential comes at restore time; you'll need only the last full backup and the last differential to get a complete restore. In the case of restoring with Incremental backups, all the Incremental backups since the last full backup plus the last full backup would be necessary.

So i am wondering since all our backup files are always new (we never have the same file that was changed), would we still need the last full backup and all incremental backups?  My guess is no, since the last full backup will NOT have any of the files that the incremental has, as each day we will always have a fresh set of backup files.  So in other words, considering our setup, would we be able to switch all our tape backup jobs in Backup Exec to INCREMENTAL?

Thanks and sorry for the long post.

[Ken_Putnam]

The argument for DIFF vs INCR and how long it takes to do a "full" restore are geared towards files backed directly to a storage media

Even if you are creating your database dumps using the database manager, in order to do a full recovery of your databases, you would need still need  the last full and the last DIFF.  Since the files have unique names, you can do INCR tape backups if you want, since all you need is one backup of each (unique) file on tape
 

Deciding what tapes to keep and for how long is still something you need to work out based on your business needs

[pkh]

The argument in your last paragraph is correct.  You would only need the last incremental to get whichever file, but this is only because of your particular situation.  Suppose you have a directory which is constantly updated and you cannot which file is updated when, then you need to restore the full plus all the incrementals.