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“D” stands for the backup that is considered Daily. “W” stands for the backup that is considered
Weekly. “M” stands for the backup that is considered Monthly.
An ideal archive created according to the GFS scheme.
Schedule: Workdays at 8:00 PM
Weekly/Monthly: Friday
Keep daily backups: 7 days
Keep weekly backups: 2 weeks
Keep monthly backups: 6 months
Starting from the third week, weekly backups will be regularly deleted. After 6 months, monthly
backups will start to be deleted. The diagram for weekly and monthly backups will look similar to the
week-based timescale.
The resulting archive: real
In reality, the archive content will somewhat differ from the ideal scheme.
When using the incremental and differential backup methods, you cannot delete a backup as soon as
the scheme requires if later backups are based on this backup. Regular consolidation is unacceptable
because it takes too much system resources. The program has to wait until the scheme requires the
deletion of all the dependent backups and then deletes the entire chain.
Here is how the first month of your backup plan will appear in real life. “F” stands for full backup.
“Dif” stands for differential backup. “I” stands for incremental backup.
