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    What is the best approach for Automatic Bakup Management? Is there a reason it defaults to Monthly, Weekly, and Daily to keep for 3 months, weeks, days?

    It would make sense to me to set saving daily backups for 7 days, weekly backup for 4 weeks and monthly backup for 3 or 4 months. This way you always have the latest versions. If you only keep daily for 3 days wouldn't you be missing 4 days in worse case scenario?

    Maybe I'm not understanding the way it operates though.
    Friday, July 24, 2009 2:04 PM

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    I'm happy with the approach Windows Home Server takes. If you're not, you have the ability to change the retention policy.

    The general logic behind retention periods is probably:
    • Dailies are for recovering from "I just installed this software and my computer is messed up" type issues and (to a lesser extent) accidental file deletions, etc.
    • Weeklies are for recovering from an issue that happened a few days ago, and you know there was some data corrupted.
    • Monthlies are for more archival storage of system state, and for recovering from an issue that's been around a while, but you "never got around to it".
    I have been in IT for many years, and generally one never needs to go back further than "the most recent good backup" for a restore operation. Your mileage may vary, however.

    As for best practices: in the home environment probably leaving Windows Home Server to do it's thing is the right approach, unless you have identifiable needs that dictate otherwise.
    I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)
    Friday, July 24, 2009 3:00 PM
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    Well, I understand what you're saying, but to me if the daily backup is only saved three days, then if you have a failure or accidental deletion on Saturday, with weekly backup on Sunday, then you've lost Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday data, because those days would have been deleted. I guess if you just assume that what you've deleted on your client is gone for good, then ok. But for me best strategy would be:

    7 days
    4 weeks
    3-6 months


    You can set the backup to save the dailys, weeklys and monthly backups in whatever increments you want. Log onto your server from the connector , click on the settings tab, select backup from the list on the left side and set the number of backups to keep. It will require more disk space, but it sounds like your more interested in the backups than space anyway. Good luck and happy backups to you.

    Cruise
    Monday, July 27, 2009 5:58 PM

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  • Question
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    I'm happy with the approach Windows Home Server takes. If you're not, you have the ability to change the retention policy.

    The general logic behind retention periods is probably:
    • Dailies are for recovering from "I just installed this software and my computer is messed up" type issues and (to a lesser extent) accidental file deletions, etc.
    • Weeklies are for recovering from an issue that happened a few days ago, and you know there was some data corrupted.
    • Monthlies are for more archival storage of system state, and for recovering from an issue that's been around a while, but you "never got around to it".
    I have been in IT for many years, and generally one never needs to go back further than "the most recent good backup" for a restore operation. Your mileage may vary, however.

    As for best practices: in the home environment probably leaving Windows Home Server to do it's thing is the right approach, unless you have identifiable needs that dictate otherwise.
    I'm not on the WHS team, I just post a lot. :)
    Friday, July 24, 2009 3:00 PM
    Moderator
  • Question
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    Well, I understand what you're saying, but to me if the daily backup is only saved three days, then if you have a failure or accidental deletion on Saturday, with weekly backup on Sunday, then you've lost Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday data, because those days would have been deleted. I guess if you just assume that what you've deleted on your client is gone for good, then ok. But for me best strategy would be:

    7 days
    4 weeks
    3-6 months


    Monday, July 27, 2009 5:18 PM
  • Question
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    Well, I understand what you're saying, but to me if the daily backup is only saved three days, then if you have a failure or accidental deletion on Saturday, with weekly backup on Sunday, then you've lost Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday data, because those days would have been deleted. I guess if you just assume that what you've deleted on your client is gone for good, then ok. But for me best strategy would be:

    7 days
    4 weeks
    3-6 months


    You can set the backup to save the dailys, weeklys and monthly backups in whatever increments you want. Log onto your server from the connector , click on the settings tab, select backup from the list on the left side and set the number of backups to keep. It will require more disk space, but it sounds like your more interested in the backups than space anyway. Good luck and happy backups to you.

    Cruise
    Monday, July 27, 2009 5:58 PM