Help a Newbie with differential type backup

[FCCTodd]

I appologize but I'm not sure how to ask this:
 
I have an imaging system that stores data in folders, it fills up a folder with a predetermined amount of data and then moves to the next folder never adding or changing the previous folder. I want to back all of this initially and then just grab the newest folder every night and add it to the original Backup set. When it comes time to restore I do not want to have to restore a years worth of nightly Backups. Please advise.

Thank you for you time,
Todd

[Ken_Putnam]

As you have guessed a DIFFERENTIAL type of job will do what you want.

Are all of these new folders under a header folder of some type, or are they all in the root of one of your drives?

if they are all root-based things get a little dicey, but if they are subordinate, place that folder in the Global Excludes List and then create separate job to backup that folder and subordinates of type DIFF

[FCCTodd]

Thank you Ken, If I use a differential then every night I will get the new data and all data since the full, this will quickly become too large and redundant as this data only needs to be backed up once.

I guess what I am trying to do is this.
Starting point only folders "A" through "G" exist.
Initial Full backup grabs folders "A" through "G"
1st night grabs the new portions of folder "G" and "H"
2nd night grabs new portions of "H" and "I"... and so on.

I think this would be incremental right?

The problem comes if and when I want to restore. 1 year down the road I need to recover this data, my understanding is that I restore full and then the 364 incrementals one job at a time.

Running differentials would make this only 2 restore jobs (Still in my uninformed understanding) but my nightly jobs would be grabbibg everything changed since the full which would quickly make these nightly jobs run for days at a time.

If I were doing this by hand I would copy all the folders once and every night I would copy the new files in the last folder and the new folders. When I need them for restoration I would just copy all the folders to where I needed them.

None of these are on the root.

Thanks and sorry If it is not clear.

Todd
 

[Ken_Putnam · Accepted solution]

Yes, what you want is an INCR, not a DIFF (guess the coffee hadn't kicked in yet)

And yes to get back to current state from scratch, you would have to restore the FULL and ALL INCR backups.   Because of this, normally one does periodic FULLs with INCR or DIFF inbetween.  Say Weekly FULLS with Daily INCR

If the folders are uniquely named, and you know which folder the file you want is in, all you would need would be the INCR that contains that day's new folder

[FCCTodd]

Thanks Ken, I thought that was the case, I guess to get what I want I will have to script a file copy because a weekly FULL would take longer than the window we have allotted.

[Ken_Putnam]

You can still do this with an INCR job of the top level  folder (with subordinates), and a Full/Incr of the rest of the server. 

How long do you plan to keep the data?  How many tapes do you have or plan to buy?

[FCCTodd]

We will keep the data indefinitely. We are backing up to disc, about 3TB allocated for this. Our FULL on this volume is ~160GB, our INCRs are ~500Mb  right now.