Reduce restore points

[adam900331]

Hy!

I have a full backup and 50 incremental backup files on my repository. I want to reduce the backup files to one full backup and 4 incremental. I set the retention policy to 5. The total free space is low, it is about 1Tb. The full backup file is 5Tb.

How can I reduce the restore points? Can I delete somehow?

Thanks.

[Mildur]

Hi Adam,

There isn't enough information to provide a helpful answer. For example, what type of backup job are you running?
- Forward Incremental (how often do you run a full backup?)
- Forever Forward Incremental
- Reverse Incremental

In general, you should let the retention process manage the removal of restore points.
However, with regular full backups, more restore points may be kept on disk than specified in your retention settings. The oldest restore points can only be deleted when the entire backup chain falls outside the retention policy. It is not possible to remove the oldest full and incremental backups if there are still dependent incremental backups within the retention period.

Our retention modes are visualized in KB1799. If you are using regular full backups, I recommend watching the animation in KB1932 to better understand why more restore points may be kept than specified in your backup job.

Best regards,
Fabian