This is probably a newb question so please bear with me.

I am looking to upgrade from my current backup program EMC Retrospect 7.5 Pro.  I am leaving that program because it works very unreliably in Vista.  One of my favorite features in Retrospect was that once I set up a backup script I never had to fiddle with the backup sets.  I backup a home PC to a removable (Maxtor) USB drive where retrospect backs up incrementally every day.  When the backup drive begins to fill up, Retrospect "prunes" the backup set to remove older versions of files so that I never have to worry about having to open up space in the drive for new backups.  It is very convenient as there are always several versions of most files backed up and I can always restore my complete drive to a point in time.  And it requires virtually no input from me.

 I am trying to figure out if doinf incrementals or continuous incrementals with SPD works the same way.  Will my backup drive just continue to fill up as incrementals are done, requiring me at some point to erase the backup and start a new cycle.  Or can SPD "prune" older files as my drive begins to fill up.  If it can be set up this way, I would appreciate any input on how to do it.

Thanks.

You can enable a retention policy in SPD which will do what you want.  When you get to the options screen of the backup wizard, click on Advanced. From there click on the Retention tab.  Tick to enable the retention policy and then specify how many images you want SPD to retain and also if, when deleting old images, you want SPD to delete just the incrementals or the full image.

If you have already set up your backup job, you can apply the retention policy by editing the job (from the SPD window, click the Backup Jobs tab, select the job you want to edit and click the Edit button). This will launch the Backup Wizard for that job. However, it will only apply the retention policy to that point forward, not on images and incrementals created before you applied the retention policy.

Regards

Charlie