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Help me understand retention

trippeer
Level 3

Please help me understand exactly how image retention works. For example, if I have a schedule that does a full backup every 2 months with a 6 month retention, what happens if a file that was deleted 2 years ago needs to be recovered? If my understanding is correct, then there would no longer be any copies of that file (most likely) because the images that contained that file were available to be expired 18 months ago. Is that correct? 

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Accepted Solutions

RonCaplinger
Level 6

Your problem already answered itself: you have a 6-month retention.  The backup image is expired at the end of the retention period and therefore you cannot restore any files from that policy/schedule older than 6 months.

However, if the file was created 2 years ago, and was still on disk every time you ran your full backup (every 2 months) and was there during any of the previous 6 months of backups, you would be able to restore that file, but only the one that was backed up on that date of the backup.

If you must be able to recover images from two years ago, you must increase your retention period to at least two years.  That will take effect with your next backup; it does not have any effect on prior backups that are still available in the catalog.  Those can be changed manually to be kept longer.

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2 REPLIES 2

RonCaplinger
Level 6

Your problem already answered itself: you have a 6-month retention.  The backup image is expired at the end of the retention period and therefore you cannot restore any files from that policy/schedule older than 6 months.

However, if the file was created 2 years ago, and was still on disk every time you ran your full backup (every 2 months) and was there during any of the previous 6 months of backups, you would be able to restore that file, but only the one that was backed up on that date of the backup.

If you must be able to recover images from two years ago, you must increase your retention period to at least two years.  That will take effect with your next backup; it does not have any effect on prior backups that are still available in the catalog.  Those can be changed manually to be kept longer.

trippeer
Level 3

That is what I thought. Thank you. I am trying to sort things out that were set up by a previous employee and this is one of the problems that came to light.