[ENHANCEMENT REQUEST] Manage (delete) restore points in orphaned backup chains

[averylarry]

It would be nice to be able to manage orphaned backup chains. My primary thought is to have the ability to remove restore points for storage space maintenance.
Example scenario:
Incremental backup chain
180 restore points
No periodic fulls

I can't delete any of this chain until I'm ready to be done with the entire chain. I would like to be able to reclaim storage space by deleting restore points over time.

[HannesK]

Hello,
what are the reasons you want to do that manually instead of letting background retention delete orphaned restore points according to the retention?

Best regards
Hannes

[averylarry]

Because I want to reclaim storage space from forever forward incremental backup chains.

Unlike the job retention, the background retention does not merge data from one backup file to another; it just deletes files. In the case of forever forward incremental and forward incremental backup chains, the background retention deletes incremental files only after the last increment in the related part of the backup chain becomes outdated.

Which means it won't delete anything until it deletes the entire backup chain 180 days from when it was orphaned.

[HannesK]

Hello,
yes, forever forward chains do not benefit from background retention and there is no option to delete anything because a deletion of any restore point would break all restore points newer than the deleted one. The recommended way would be to do synthetic fulls every week (does not cost any disk space on XFS / REFS) and then background retention would work.

To answer your request: there are currently no plans to allow deleting restore points from a chain (especially not from forever forward where one would have to merge to not break the chain). We count your feature request +1

Best regards
Hannes