Repository Maintenance

[JMana]

When I initially created our backup jobs, I set the retention policy to "keep restore points on disk" to 200. First full backup is a little more than 2 years old now.
Now, I am concerned I will eventually run out of space in our repository (oldest restore point is injected in to the full backup) and how reliable the full backup file is.
Looking for an advise/best practice on how to maintain and keep the restore points without running out of space in our repository and what is the recommended life span for a full backup file.

[foggy]

Here's the topic that I recommend to review for some general considerations regarding backup reliability. If you're running out of space, you can decrease the number of restore points or perform compact operation, I'm pretty sure such long chain is considerably fragmented.

[JMana]

Thanks Foggy. If I decrease the number of restore points (from 200 to 30), what will happen to the "expired" restore points? Will they be injected to the full backup? Then that will significantly increase the size of the full backup, correct? Will that help me with my space issue? You also have suggested to perform compact operation, is that the same as the Storage Corruption Guard? I have enabled that when I created the initial backup jobs and scheduled it once a week.
Sorry, I'm in a bit of panic mode here....

[JMana]

Also, I never had another full or synthetic backup after my very first initial full backup and I have the standard edition so I do not have access to SureBackup.
Although I have backup to tape jobs that runs after the backup to disk jobs. I have set it to Synthetic Full every week.

[foggy]

If I decrease the number of restore points (from 200 to 30), what will happen to the "expired" restore points? Will they be injected to the full backup? Then that will significantly increase the size of the full backup, correct? Will that help me with my space issue?

Yes, older restore points will be injected into the full backup, but some blocks will be written instead of already unused ones, other ones will be overwritten due to having been changed, so the full backup space should be less than the total amount of space occupied by restore points.

You also have suggested to perform compact operation, is that the same as the Storage Corruption Guard?

Yes, by compact I meant this operation.