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Thread ID: 122962	2012-01-24 02:18:00	Microsoft backup	bugalugs67 (9647)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1255681	2012-01-24 02:18:00	Have been using M/Soft Backup in Vista to do weekly backups to a 250GB Expansion Drive. That drive is now chocka with backups dating back over two years. I need to delete some of the oldest backups to gain more space. Something tells me that I don’t want to go back to say the first year and just delete everything prior to xyz date. From the size and structure of the backup files it looks like it only backs up files which have been changed since the last time. Is there any way I can safely have the oldest backups deleted to allow space on the drive for the newest ? Would that have to do a full backup (only of the files I've nominated to be backed up)? Are there alternative programs out there that will do this and meet that impotent criteria FREE	bugalugs67 (9647)
1255682	2012-01-24 07:16:00	sounds like you have been doing incremental backups (only backup changed files). you cant delete the older backups since some of the files that you may need and have not changed would be deleted. you could get a bigger external drive (1TB), and set that as a new backup drive.	ronyville (10611)
1255683	2012-01-24 09:27:00	Yes but.... I would then have to copy all the files across and then have the same problem in a couple of years time when the larger drive got full. In the meantime with incremental backups I could have two dozen copies of one regularly used file but a dozen-n-a-half of them could be dumped without effecting the integrity of the backups. The alternative would be to reformat the Expansion drive which would delete everything and hope that nothing went tits-up while I was doing that :illogical	bugalugs67 (9647)
1255684	2012-01-24 11:11:00	Dump your incrementals (in order!) into the original full backup. Or keep the original "original" and consolidate your incrementals (again, in order is important). This will only overwrite old copies of changed files. Stop when you have enough free space and/or reach some data that you may still want to go back to and don't want overwritten. edit: This assumes you can access the files directly, not familiar with how MS Backup works anymore ... If you have a linux available, rsync with hard-links is a nice way to have full daily snapshots available but only use the space for incremental backups. :)	fred_fish (15241)
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