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[Vincenzo]

I'm using Ghost 12 with Vista.  I notice that by default it wants to limit the number of incremental recovery points that the program will create to three. 

Is there some compelling reason not to have more incremental recovery points?

And what is a guideline for determining when to stop making incrementall backups, and to make a new base image.

Thanks

Message Edited by Vincenzo on 04-23-2008 01:34 PM

[Tony_Weiss Administrator]

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Vincenzo wrote:
...Is there some compelling reason not to have more incremental recovery points?

And what is a guideline for determining when to stop making incrementall backups, and to make a new base image...

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Hi Vincenzo,

You can set your own guidelines for how many incremental recovery points are created for a Recover Point Set, and I find that if you have the storage disk space to support more incremental images, you may wish to use that space for the backups. Depending on how frequently you update your system with new data (documents, photos, programs, etc.) you may wish to have a month's worth of incremental recovery points, so you can choose from several different points in the history. It all depends on how you use your system and your data. I'm sure other people on the forums have different settings for their Norton ghost 14.0 backups. Does anyone want to share his/her preferences?

[StekertJ]

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Tony_Weiss wrote:

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Vincenzo wrote:
...Is there some compelling reason not to have more incremental recovery points?

And what is a guideline for determining when to stop making incrementall backups, and to make a new base image...

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Hi Vincenzo,

You can set your own guidelines for how many incremental recovery points are created for a Recover Point Set, and I find that if you have the storage disk space to support more incremental images, you may wish to use that space for the backups. Depending on how frequently you update your system with new data (documents, photos, programs, etc.) you may wish to have a month's worth of incremental recovery points, so you can choose from several different points in the history. It all depends on how you use your system and your data. I'm sure other people on the forums have different settings for their Norton ghost 14.0 backups. Does anyone want to share his/her preferences?

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New data enters this system daily, so I run Ghost backup sets with daily scheduled increments.  If something especially important changes after a scheduled increment, I sometimes run additional manual increments.  At present, because of target disk size, I'm automatically limiting the base/increment sets to two (i.e., between one and two weeks worth at any time).

-- Jim 

[Vincenzo]

Thanks for the information.

I'm still unclear on one point.  If I am making an incremental backup every week, after three months I would have the base image files, and then 11 more increment files.  Is there any problem having that many increment files?  Would I be better off if every month I started a new recovery point set (base), so there would not be more than three incremental files added on to each base file? 

It seems quicker, easier and more storage efficient to just keep to doing the incremental files, rather than starting fresh with a new recovery point set (base).  But I am wondering if there is some problem with having too many incremental files attached to a full backup.

Thanks

Message Edited by Vincenzo on 04-23-2008 06:41 PM

[Tony_Weiss Administrator]

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Vincenzo wrote:
...If I am making an incremental backup every week, after three months I would have the base image files, and then 11 more increment files.  Is there any problem having that many increment files?  Would I be better off if every month I started a new recovery point set (base), so there would not be more than three incremental files added on to each base file? 

It seems quicker, easier and more storage efficient to just keep to doing the incremental files, rather than starting fresh with a new recovery point set (base).  But I am wondering if there is some problem with having too many incremental files attached to a full backup...

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A reason to have several recovery points (incremental images) in a Recovery Point Set is to restore your system to point in history that far back. If you think you would restore your system to a specific state 3 months ago, then you may want to use this method. Otherwise, more frequent base images might be a better method. Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns. Thanks!

Message Edited by Tony_Weiss on 04-24-2008 02:26 PM

[Vincenzo]

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Tony_Weiss wrote:

Otherwise, more frequent base images might be a better method.

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What is the advantage that more frequent base images would provide?

Thanks

[Tony_Weiss Administrator]

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Vincenzo wrote:

What is the advantage that more frequent base images would provide?

Thanks

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A more frequently created base image would provide more free space on that drive. I'm sorry I didn't clarify that point.

[Vincenzo]

OK thanks. But concerning the integrity of the image, there is no problem having a base image with, say, 15 or 20 incremental image files associated with it?

Thanks

[Tony_Weiss Administrator]

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Vincenzo wrote:

OK thanks. But concerning the integrity of the image, there is no problem having a base image with, say, 15 or 20 incremental image files associated with it?

Thanks

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If you were to encounter a problem with your system, and needed to restore a recovery point set with (for example) 15 incrementals, and you wanted to restore at #12, the integrity of this image would not be compromised. However, the whole point of the recovery points is to take a quick backup of sectors that have changed. So, you may wish to just schedule the Base image for the incremental image to be created when you schedule your drive defragmentation. Depending on the level of fragmentation, an incremental recovery point created after a defrag could be almost as large as a base image. Thanks!

[donahu1]

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Vincenzo wrote:

Thanks for the information.

I'm still unclear on one point.  If I am making an incremental backup every week, after three months I would have the base image files, and then 11 more increment files.  Is there any problem having that many increment files?  Would I be better off if every month I started a new recovery point set (base), so there would not be more than three incremental files added on to each base file? 

It seems quicker, easier and more storage efficient to just keep to doing the incremental files, rather than starting fresh with a new recovery point set (base).  But I am wondering if there is some problem with having too many incremental files attached to a full backup.

Thanks

Message Edited by Vincenzo on 04-23-2008 06:41 PM

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You can edit and manage your backups. You say your hard drive is backed up and you have 11 incremental backups?  I would probably toss (by date) the oldest ones and just keep the last few....If hard disk space is at a premium