Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
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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.
The backups that outlive their nominal lifetime because of dependencies are marked pink. The initial
full backup will be deleted as soon as all differential and incremental backups based on this backup
are deleted.
An archive created according to the GFS scheme by Acronis Backup & Recovery 10.
Schedule: Workdays at 8:00 PM
Weekly/Monthly: Friday
Keep daily backups: 7 days
Keep weekly backups: 2 weeks
Keep monthly backups: 6 months
2.6
Tower of Hanoi backup scheme
The need to have frequent backups always conflicts with the cost of keeping such backups for a long
time. The Tower of Hanoi (ToH) backup scheme is a useful compromise.
