differential backups

[ntraiser]

I have my daily jobs set to full but I am exluding my individual exchange mailboxes from the selection list.  If change my daily jobs from full to differential ideally I could add the individual mailboxes back to the selection list with the understanding that my once a week full will be 2 tapes. 

If I do this how are the mailboxes backed up?  For instance if a user needed to restore a single email from yesterday can I do that?  Is the entire mailbox backed up since it was changed?  I'm curious how that effects the differntial job size?

[D_B_5]

If you run the full each week on the mailboxes, then differential every other day, what will result in the backups will be only the items that were received/deleted etc since the last Full... 

For instance, you do a Full backup on Sunday.

On Monday, you do a differential.  Result: Only new mail, calendar entries, contacts, etc are backed up.

On Tuesday, you do a differential.  Result:  All changes from Monday and Tuesday are backed up.

On Wednesday, you do a differential.  Result:  All changes from Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are backed up.

Etc, etc.  This would continue until the next Full runs on Sunday, resetting the differential points again.

As you can see, the later differentials will be bigger since they include all data the previous differentials had backed up.  You could put an Incremental there on Thursday, then Friday - Sunday  differntials would only back up from changes made after Wednesday's differntial.

In either event, the jobs will be smaller than daily Full backups.

Hope that explains it a bit more for you.

Message Edited by D B on 07-18-200702:02 PM