Howdy this is my first post,

I've searched the FAQ and Knowledge Base and could not find an answer, so here I go:-

I've just gone through a rebuild of my lapdog. Always a fun thing. The usual reason for the lapdog rebuild (every 6-12 months) is self inflicted. I load and unload lots of junk. What usually happens is that the system slowly (over months) starts to mis-behave or something I loaded long ago intermittently starts to fail. The point is that I have no clear safe point to go back to, where I know everything was clean.

What I'd like to do is take a full backups now, and keep it as my gold image. In the event of bad things happening, this full image would be a good barebones, baremetal image that gets me working again, but doesn't have lots of fun software on it. In addition to this I'd like to take differentials from this base every day and keep a few (space permitting). The differentials would allow me to recovery from minor bad things (lost or corrupt files, or an opps). Plus the methodology of a full and any of the differentials would provide a current baremetal recovery.

So how do I schedule a differential to occur every day? If I can't schedule it, can I command line it into a batch job?

Also is there any way to enforce a retention policy. If I only have enough space for 14 differentials and the full, I'd like to delete the older differentials in some automated way. Again can it be scheduled or scripted?

Thanks for your time guys.

I think we can do what you are asking.  Try this:

1.  Make a weekly schedule.
2.  Under Full Backup Check mark each day that you want a differential and set the time of each Full.
3.  Remove all check marks on the incrementals.
4.  Click next and then select the Advanced options and check mark the "Second and subsequent backups are differentials."

Not sure how the retention policy will react, but I think it should work.  The retenion policy will not delete you only full.

Scott
STC

Sorry to intrude in this thread, but I have a related question.  I've just started to use ShadowProtect (I've always used file-based backup software - Retrospect - before), and my goal is essentially the same as the OP's, but I'm wondering why I couldn't achieve that by choosing Continuous Incremental backup with weekly incrementals which, as I understand it, would result in weekly incremental backups all building off a single original Full Backup.  The solution proposed here seems to result in weekly Differential backups building off a single original Full backup.  I guess I don't understand the differences between these two approaches, and why I'd want to choose one or the other.

Thanks!