As a professional Windows backup software, Hasleo Backup Suite supports differential backup, incremental backup and full backup on Windows Vista/Server 2008 or later operating systems. With the increase of backup versions, backup image files occupy more and more storage space, especially in the case of backing up a large amount of data, this problem will become more prominent. The backup image merge feature provided by Hasleo Backup Suite allows us to merge multiple consecutive backup image versions into one version to free up storage space, and it is suitable for System Backup, Disk/Partition Backup and File Backup.
Below we will show you how to manually merge backup images to free up storage space, and you can also configure the backup image retention policy in the Backup options to automatically perform the image merge operation after the backup operation is complete.
Step 1. Launch Hasleo Backup Suite, click "Tools" button in the navigation bar, then click "Merge Image" button in the operation area.
Step 2. Select the task or browse the image file you want to merge, then click "Next".
Step 3. Select the backup image versions you want to merge, then click "Proceed". And if you checked "Allow comments when merging" checkbox, you need to enter the comment here to continue. Please note that you must select multiple consecutive backup image versions to perform the merge operation.
* The Allow comments when merging option allows you to set a comment for the merged backup image before performing the merge operation.
Step 4. Hasleo Backup Suite starts to merge the backup image files, it will take some time, so please be patient.
Step 5. After the backup image merge operation is complete, click "Finish" to exit.
A: When you merge consecutive backup image versions, they are combined into a single version. The merged image preserves the data from all included versions, but older individual restore points will no longer be accessible separately.
A: No, you must select consecutive backup image versions to merge. The merge operation only works with adjacent versions in the backup chain.
A: Yes, after a successful merge operation, the original backup image files that were merged are automatically deleted to free up storage space.
A: The savings depend on the data change rate between backup versions. With incremental and differential backups, merging can significantly reduce storage usage because duplicate data blocks are consolidated.
A: No, the merge operation is irreversible. Once merged, the individual backup versions cannot be restored separately. It is recommended to create a full backup before merging if you need to preserve specific restore points.
A: No, you can only merge backup images that belong to the same backup task. The merge feature does not support combining images from different tasks.
