NTBackup - Retention Policy

[Al]

Hi Guys,

Does anyone know if there is a way to make NTBackup delete backups
after say they get older than a month or whatever?

I couldnt find it?

Cheers

-Al

 

[Anteaus]

You obviously don't understand the need for backup rotation.

Any site with valuable data should be storing backups for at least a year.

A common mistake is to rotate five tapes or disks on weekly basis. Under
this scheme, when it is discovered that a file created eight days ago has
been corrupted, the file is GONE, because all previous backups have since
been rewritten with the bad version.

Any practical backup scheme must include copies made on a monthly basis, at
least.

For disk backup, Lazy Mirror provides a way of implementing hierarchical
backups.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~wstudios/LazyMirror/index.html

 

[Pegasus [MVP]]

Hi Guys,

Does anyone know if there is a way to make NTBackup delete backups
after say they get older than a month or whatever?

I couldnt find it?

Cheers

-Al

Ntbackup is a basic product and it has no advanced facility like the one
you're after. One way to achieve your aim is to name each backup file after
the day when it was made, e.g. 10.bkf, 29.bkf, 30.bkf. In this way old file
are automatically overwritten. Another way is to use a script like this one:

[01] '--------------------------------------------
[02] 'This script will delete .bkf files that were
[03] 'created "MaxAge" days ago.
[04] '30.1.2009 FNL
[05] '--------------------------------------------
[06] Active = false
[07] sSource = "d:\Sat"
[08] iMaxAge = 10 'days
[09]
[10] Checked = 0
[11] Deleted = 0
[12]
[13] Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
[14] if active then verb = "Deleting """ Else verb = "Old file: """
[15] CheckFolder oFSO.GetFolder(sSource)
[16]
[17] WScript.echo
[18] if Active then verb = " file(s) deleted" else verb = " file(s) would be
deleted"
[19] wscript.echo Checked & " file(s) checked, " & Deleted & verb
[20]
[21] Sub CheckFolder (oFldr)
[22] For Each oFile In oFldr.Files
[23] if ucase(right(oFile.name, 4)) = ".BKF" then
[24] Checked = Checked + 1
[25] If DateDiff("D", oFile.DateLastModified, Now()) > iMaxAge Then
[26] Deleted = Deleted + 1
[27] WScript.Echo verb & oFile.Path & """"
[28] If Active Then oFile.Delete
[29] End If
[30] end if
[31] Next
[32] End Sub

Instructions:
1. Save the script to a suitable location, e.g. to
c:\Windows\DeleteOldFiles.vbs. Make sure to retain the .vbs extension.
2. Unwrap any lines that might be wrapped around.
3. Adjust lines 07 and 08 to suit your requirements.
4. Remove the line numbers.
5. Type this command at the Command Prompt:
cscript //nologo c:\Windows\DeleteOldFiles.vbs
6. If you're satisfied with what you see, activate the script by setting
line 06 to "Active = true".
7. Test the script again.
8. Create a scheduled tas that will run once every day, e.g. at 3pm. It must
run this command:
cscript //nologo c:\Windows\DeleteOldFiles.vbs

 

[Tony]

/| /| | | |
||__|| | | Piss off,
/ O O\ Wankstain
/ \ |
/ \ \|____________________|
/ _ \ \ ||
/ |\____\ \ ||
/ | | | |\____/ ||
/ \|_|_|/ | _||
/ / \ |____| ||
/ | | | --|
| | | |____ --|
* _ | |_|_|_| | \-/
*-- _--\ _ \ | ||
/ _ \\ | / `
* / \_ /- | | |
* ___ c_c_c_C/ \C_c_c_c____________

Hi Guys,

Does anyone know if there is a way to make NTBackup delete backups
after say they get older than a month or whatever?

I couldnt find it?

Cheers

-Al

--
The Grandmaster of the CyberFROG

Come get your ticket to CyberFROG city

Nay, Art thou decideth playeth ye simpleton games. *Some* of us know
proper manners

Very few. I used to take calls from *rank* noobs,

Hamster isn't a newsreader it's a mistake!

El-Gonzo Jackson FROGS both me and Chuckcar

Master Juba was a black man imitating a white man imitating a black man

Using my technical prowess and computer abilities to answer questions
beyond the realm of understandability

Regards Tony... Making usenet better for everyone everyday

 

[BillW50]

In Anteaus typed on Sat, 10 Oct 2009 02:19:01 -0700:

You obviously don't understand the need for backup rotation.

Any site with valuable data should be storing backups for at least a
year.

A common mistake is to rotate five tapes or disks on weekly basis.
Under this scheme, when it is discovered that a file created eight
days ago has been corrupted, the file is GONE, because all previous
backups have since been rewritten with the bad version.

Any practical backup scheme must include copies made on a monthly
basis, at least.

For disk backup, Lazy Mirror provides a way of implementing
hierarchical backups.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~wstudios/LazyMirror/index.html

Well I don't agree with keeping backups for a year. Some of my computers
hasn't changed in years. I am also a fan of Microsoft EWF. Which means
your system doesn't change anyway when it is enabled. And it is hard to
be infected with a virus or malware when none of them won't stick, now
is it?

And big talkers of backups virtually always don't talk about the
importance of hardware backups. Why is that? I have always bought my
computers in pairs since '99 and sometimes since '81. And for any reason
one computer goes down, it could be software or hardware related. I am
back up again in mere seconds.

 

[Al]

You obviously don't understand the need for backup rotation.

Any site with valuable data should be storing backups for at least a year..

A month was simply a arbitary time frame for the purposes of the
example - dont read into it too much.

A common mistake is to rotate five tapes or disks on weekly basis. Under
this scheme, when it is discovered that a file created eight days ago has
been corrupted, the file is GONE, because all previous backups have since
been rewritten with the bad version.

How do you propose that companies archive 1Gb of data each week at a
economic cost vs benefit?

Any practical backup scheme must include copies made on a monthly basis, at
least.

For disk backup, Lazy Mirror provides a way of implementing hierarchical
backups.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~wstudios/LazyMirror/index.html

Maybe you dont understand the difference between archival and backup.
I am talking about backup not archival.

 

[Al]

Hi Guys,

Does anyone know if there is a way to make NTBackup delete backups
after say they get older than a month or whatever?

I couldnt find it?

-Al

Ntbackup is a basic product and it has no advanced facility like the one
you're after. One way to achieve your aim is to name each backup file after
the day when it was made, e.g. 10.bkf, 29.bkf, 30.bkf. In this way old file
are automatically overwritten. Another way is to use a script like this one:

[01] '--------------------------------------------
[02] 'This script will delete .bkf files that were
[03] 'created "MaxAge" days ago.
[04] '30.1.2009 FNL
[05] '--------------------------------------------
[06] Active  = false
[07] sSource = "d:\Sat"
[08] iMaxAge  = 10   'days
[09]
[10] Checked = 0
[11] Deleted = 0
[12]
[13] Set oFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
[14] if active then verb = "Deleting """ Else verb = "Old file: """
[15] CheckFolder oFSO.GetFolder(sSource)
[16]
[17] WScript.echo
[18] if Active then verb = " file(s) deleted" else verb = " file(s) would be
deleted"
[19] wscript.echo Checked & " file(s) checked, " & Deleted & verb
[20]
[21] Sub CheckFolder (oFldr)
[22]    For Each oFile In oFldr.Files
[23]       if ucase(right(oFile.name, 4)) = ".BKF" then
[24]          Checked = Checked + 1
[25]          If DateDiff("D", oFile.DateLastModified, Now()) >iMaxAge Then
[26]             Deleted = Deleted + 1
[27]             WScript.Echo verb & oFile.Path & """"
[28]             If Active Then oFile.Delete
[29]          End If
[30]       end if
[31]    Next
[32] End Sub

Instructions:
1. Save the script to a suitable location, e.g. to
c:\Windows\DeleteOldFiles.vbs. Make sure to retain the .vbs extension.
2. Unwrap any lines that might be wrapped around.
3. Adjust lines 07 and 08 to suit your requirements.
4. Remove the line numbers.
5. Type this command at the Command Prompt:
    cscript //nologo c:\Windows\DeleteOldFiles.vbs
6. If you're satisfied with what you see, activate the script by setting
line 06 to "Active = true".
7. Test the script again.
8. Create a scheduled tas that will run once every day, e.g. at 3pm. It must
run this command:
    cscript //nologo c:\Windows\DeleteOldFiles.vbs

Thanks, the first option looks like it could work. I will create a
backup for each week of the year, run once per week, and overwrite it
each year.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

You obviously don't understand the need for backup rotation.

Any site with valuable data should be storing backups for at least a year.

I completely disagree with this statement. How long you need to keep
backups depends entirely on what it is you are backing up, how
important it is to you, and to what degree it changes. The same is
true regarding how frequently to backup.

Although what you say may be right for some users, there is no answer
to these questions that is right for everyone.

 

[Leythos]

You obviously don't understand the need for backup rotation.

Any site with valuable data should be storing backups for at least a year.

That's a blanket statement, and it's wrong in many cases.

Backing up some information for any period of time is based on the needs
and reason for the backup.

I have customers that, because of SOX requirements, backup with more
than 50 tapes, 5 per week, 4/5 sets per month, 1 monthly, 1 yearly, keep
6 yearly tapes....

I have backups on CD/DVD that I've moved from Diskette/Tape from the
late 80's for my own business...

My own servers, for my company, keep a rotation of 5 USB drives since we
monitor our backups and file use - that's more than enough time for us.
We also do a scheduled end-of-month backup to the USB drive that's
attached at the time - so we can go back 1 month if needed.

To say 1 year as a blanket statement is not true.

 

[Twayne]

Hi Guys,

Does anyone know if there is a way to make NTBackup delete backups
after say they get older than a month or whatever?

I couldnt find it?

Cheers

-Al

No, ntbackup.exe won't do that. In fact, most backup programs don't.
The reason is that most people want to keep multiple historical backups
for various periods of time.
For instance, I backup by doing a full backup once a month and
incermentals in between, and whenever anything substantial has changed
on the machine, I do a full backup to DVDs to keep for posterity so to
speak. If it should turn out I want that picture of Aunt Matilda I had
last year, but wish I hadn't deleted it, I can go to an old backup and
get it back. Same with anything else. Otherwise my backups go to my
external terabyte disk drive.
I said the above to give you ideas; maybe you have no need of such,
but it's there if you do.

Back to your question: You could accomplish what you want with a batch
file and use Task Scheduler to run it if your backups are scheduled, or
just run the bacth file and let it do the deletion and then open
ntbackup for you.

HTH,

Twayne`

 

[BillW50]

In Twayne typed on Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:22:01 -0400:

No, ntbackup.exe won't do that. In fact, most backup programs don't.
The reason is that most people want to keep multiple historical
backups for various periods of time.
For instance, I backup by doing a full backup once a month and
incermentals in between, and whenever anything substantial has changed
on the machine, I do a full backup to DVDs to keep for posterity so to
speak. If it should turn out I want that picture of Aunt Matilda I
had last year, but wish I hadn't deleted it, I can go to an old
backup and get it back. Same with anything else. Otherwise my
backups go to my external terabyte disk drive.
I said the above to give you ideas; maybe you have no need of such,
but it's there if you do.

Back to your question: You could accomplish what you want with a batch
file and use Task Scheduler to run it if your backups are scheduled,
or just run the bacth file and let it do the deletion and then open
ntbackup for you.

HTH,

Twayne`

Actually some of them do. I just checked and I can't find which one I
saw that does allows you to select how many backups it will keep before
deleting the oldest one. It was most likely in one of the following:

Ghost v11
Acronis True Image Home 2009
Acronis True Image WD Edition (free)
Paragon Drive Backup v9

Ah found it. It is Acronis True Image Home 2009. It allows you to limit
the number of backups, the number of days old, or the size limit of all
of the backups. Anything outside of the limits will be deleted. It is
found under the Backup Wizard under Automatic Consolidation.

 

[Twayne]

In Twayne typed on Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:22:01 -0400:

Actually some of them do. I just checked and I can't find which one I
saw that does allows you to select how many backups it will keep
before deleting the oldest one. It was most likely in one of the
following:
Ghost v11
Acronis True Image Home 2009
Acronis True Image WD Edition (free)
Paragon Drive Backup v9

Ah found it. It is Acronis True Image Home 2009. It allows you to
limit the number of backups, the number of days old, or the size
limit of all of the backups. Anything outside of the limits will be
deleted. It is found under the Backup Wizard under Automatic
Consolidation.

Ghost does that, and I'm pretty sure I recall Acronis too, but for some
reason I decided that wasn't what the OP was looking for. Now I'm not so
sure.
For one thing I'm not sure whether it's a FIFO or a FILO or a combo
of the two procedures and have never checked it out. When you use
Incrementals, the lines seem to blur on me.
I set mine to keep 5 versions but then set auto-optimize ON along
with limiting the storage space size so I never really get 5 versions,
but it's always at least 3. That way I have over two months of
historical data available. Plust I do Full backups to DVD each month.
So sounds like Ghost and TI do about the same things.

HTH,

Twayne`