Backup Type: Incremental
Retention rule: Keep 4 backups
Sythetic: checkbox "Create a synthetic full if possible" is ticked

Hi forum members,

Due to logon problems (error "8007052e", see forum V6 "Scheduling, gf aug 20, 2018") I have to perform the Incrementals manually

When I had 4 Incrementals, performing the 5th the oldest incremental was deleted (hopefully merged wiith the full!?), so only 4 incrementals were left. Seemed to be according to the rule.
:-)
I expected the same behaviour the following weeks when performing furher incrementals manually.
But instead since then the previous incrementals stays in the backup chain .
Now No. 7 is reached as opposite to the retention rule "4". :-((

3 questions:

1. Doesn´t retention work with manual backups?

2. If not, could at least a manual Synthetic be performed?

3. If not, is deletion of the whole chain and doing a new full the only solution to not run into space problems?    

Every contribution is appreciated.

1. Retention works with manual backups.  I use Synthetic Fulls and manual backups all the time.  What exact steps are you following to perform the manual backup?  You should be right-clicking the same definition file that would normally be used by your schedule and selecting Run Now > Incremental.  The retention policy is stored in the definition file, so it's important that your manual jobs be performed according to that definition file.  If you do it some other way, the manual occurrences would be using some other set of retention settings, possibly the default settings shown in the Edit Defaults interface.  If that doesn't solve the issue, please post the job log from one of your manual runs.  Make sure not to include your license key, which is shown at the bottom of every log.  And if you have email notifications enabled, you may want to omit the email addresses as well.

2. You can perform manual consolidation operations, i.e. Synthetic Fulls or Incremental Merge, using the standalone Consolidate.exe file that Macrium provides.  Documentation and download link available here.

3. No, you don't have to delete everything to get back on track.  Once whatever is causing your manual backups not to work as expected is solved, your next Reflect job will consolidate everything down to comply with your retention policy, even if that means consolidating more than one backup, or you can use the standalone consolidation tool as mentioned above.

+x

 

jphughan - 25 August 2018 8:53 PM

1. Retention works with manual backups.  I use Synthetic Fulls and manual backups all the time.  What exact steps are you following to perform the manual backup?  You should be right-clicking the same definition file that would normally be used by your schedule and selecting Run Now > Incremental.  The retention policy is stored in the definition file, so it's important that your manual jobs be performed according to that definition file.  If you do it some other way, the manual occurrences would be using some other set of retention settings, possibly the default settings shown in the Edit Defaults interface.  If that doesn't solve the issue, please post the job log from one of your manual runs.  Make sure not to include your license key, which is shown at the bottom of every log.  And if you have email notifications enabled, you may want to omit the email addresses as well.

2. You can perform manual consolidation operations, i.e. Synthetic Fulls or Incremental Merge, using the standalone Consolidate.exe file that Macrium provides.  Documentation and download link available here.

3. No, you don't have to delete everything to get back on track.  Once whatever is causing your manual backups not to work as expected is solved, your next Reflect job will consolidate everything down to comply with your retention policy, even if that means consolidating more than one backup, or you can use the standalone consolidation tool as mentioned above.

@jphughan

1. Your guess was right that I performed the incremental in a deviant way: Tab Restore, right click on the last incremental, selection incremental. Didn´t know, that it has to go only via backup definition file to perform a backup according to the settings. Thanks for this note. I´ll try it on next schedule date.

2. Thank you also very much for providing a link to "Standalone backup consolidation". Until now I didn´t know, that something like that exists.

3. I´m relieved that´s not necessary to delete the previous backup chain and perform a new one.

All in all, your reply had been very valuable for me.