You may want to refer to the following:
Symantec Backup Exec™ System Recovery Manager 8.0 Implementation Guide - Managing backups: Creating a backup job; Recovery point schedule options-- Table 5-6; page 120
When consolidation occurs, two or more incremental recovery points created within a 4 or 12 hour period are combined into a single *.iv2i file with the source incremental updates, from which this consolidated incremental is created, deleted. This option is employed to save on storage space at the expense of having less granular restore capabilities; once consolidate a restore can then only go back to the last 4 or 12 hour ‘block’ then what the original individual incremental updates could offer.
It is not recommend to consolidate incremental updates if storage space is not a concern or less then two incremental updates are created within a 4 or 12 hour period.
