How to efficiently separate full, incremental and differential

[Joel_R_White]

I understand that to do a incremental or a differential you must have a full backup...my media sets are set to Full Backup-->overwrite after 4weeks...my differential media set is Differential-->overwrite after 2 weeks, and incremental is Incremental-->overwrite after 1 week...what i am wanting to do is backup each server with a full backup each month, then a differential every day for two weeks then overwrite the data...and some servers like our file server lunch server and business server incrementally every day and overwrite after a week...the way it looks is that i am going to have to create a separate job with a full every month, then a full with a differential every two weeks overwrite or a full with an incremental...i have 8 disks 800gb with 1:2 ratio to make 1.6tb...i have to also add a tape to the media set ...I am a newbie that has read the manual...looked at different posts and forums, and watched roughly 6 videos on backup exec planning, implementing and creating a backup...my question is for the full and incremental, and the full and differential...should i make a new media set for the full differential so that is overwrites the full and the differential backup every two weeks? or should i leave that full backup for a month before overwriting?...im shaky on the planning of the backups...incremental for the servers that has a data change daily? and differential for the ones that data is more important and needs to be restored quickly?...such as our student files...and virtual server running the student files system..The complete full backups i was going to do monthly and take to offline storage...what is the industry standard for offline storage?  overwrite allowed or no overwrite at all?  I just upgraded to 2012 from BE 12.5 and there are a lot of changes...mainly to the shadow copy...so i had to add the servers and recreate my backups...I only have 8 servers, a file server, domain controller with ad and backup exec server, student database server, wsus, hyper-v server,exchange, antivirus server/library database server, and a business office server..without knowing how much space each full backup will take...it is hard to calculate how many tapes per backup...any insight, hopefully non-sarcastic and arrogant, would be helpful...thank you in advance for being helpful and mature...

[pkh]

You have so many questions that is is very difficult for us to understand and untangle them.  It would be more useful to post your questions as seperate discussions.

I would suggest that that you go through the Admin Guide thoroughly, particularly the sections on Data Management and backup schemes.  You can also read my article

https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/articles/pros-and-cons-various-backup-schemes

There are trade-offs for the various backup schemes, so choose carefully.

Next, decide on how long you want to retain your data.  This is important so that you do not end up in a situation where your backup sets are overwritten before they are needed.

Set up your jobs and media sets accordingly.