Incremental backup failed once, do i have to re-run Full backup?

[DroPpeLoPpeN]

We're using Backup Exec 12.5, and run a full backup of our Exchange server once every month, and then a daily incremental backup. This months full backup was successfull, and the incremental backups has also been sucessful, until the one that we ran the 15th ("Initialization failure on...Second storage group") Yesterday, the incremental backup ran successfully again, without any action taken.

My question is: Will I be able to restore this backup, if needed, although one of the incremental backups was "failed". Or do I have to run a new full backup to secure it?

[Kiran_Bandi]

No need to run the full again. Incremental backup ran on 16th would have backedup the changes that had happened since 14th incremental backup. 

PS: Consider running FULL backups atleast once in a week.

[pkh · Accepted solution]

You should run your full backup more frequently.  Since you are doing incremental backups, to restore somthing you need to restore the full backup + ALL the incremental backups since the full backup.  Imagine the time and effort required, if you need to restore some thing at the end of the month.  You have to restore your full backup and 20+ incremental backups.

Coming back to your question.  You should run a full backup after the failure of an incremental job.  This is because the incremental job will reset the archive bit and the files will not be backed up.  If you run an incremental backup, it will only contain the files modified/added after the 15th.  You will not get the files modified/added between the 14th and 15th because their archive bit would have been reset by the failed job.  The same applies to the modified time method because the timestamp of the incremental job will be used as a reference.

[Colin_Weaver]

With Exchnage Incremental Job failure, I personnally would sugges you should run another full - it kind of depends on where the failure occured however, but if Exchange truncted the logs even though the backup was unsuccessful it woudl means that ou do not have a valid sequence of log fiels to roll through to do a restroe of yoru information tore.

Also like the others suggest a Monthly full is not a recommended time period. If your Exchange server is relatively busy then just at a basic level that length of time will means that the GRT catalog process can suffer from performance issues as the incremental dates build up. It also means that if you lost one of your incremental sets (media damaged etc) then the potential loss of ability to restore data would cover a longer timespan.