Forever Forward Incemental Configuration

[Parallax Abstraction]

Hey all.

I'm a Macrium Reflect v8 refugee who is finally trying alternatives after I tried to mount a backup last night and found out Macrium's driver for that has been blacklisted by Microsoft for a CVE and their answer is "upgrade to the subscription version".

When using Reflect, I had what's often called a Forever Forward Incremental backup policy. It took a full backup at the start, 7 incrementals and then once it took the next one, the oldest incremental would merge back into the full. Given that the backup I take is almost 8TB before compression and doesn't have huge daily changes, I found this method to be quicker than taking a fresh full every week.

The renention policy settings screen in Hasleo and the web documentation doesn't make it clear to me how I achieve this here. From what I've read elsewhere, it is possible but I can't find the right combination of settings. I can specify for it to keep 1 week of Fulls and 7 days of Incrementals but from what I'm reading, that will take another Full at the end of the week instead of merging the oldest Incrementals. I looked into the "Always retain the first backup" setting which is recommended for both users but from what I read on that, it will just keep the first backup untouchable, meaning it won't do any merging at all.

I'm sure what I'm asking is possible and I just don't understand the different way Hasleo does setting versus Macrium. Can anyone clarify what I'd need to set this up?

Thanks all!

[al3x]

Hi and welcome to the Hasleo forum!

From my own testing I can say this:

If you set the retention policy to keep 7 incremental backups and you take incremental backups forever, HBS will keep 7 incremental backups and merge the two oldest incremental backups with each new backup. That will leave you with the original full backup untouched and 7 additional incremental backups rotating.

What it doesn't do automatically, is merging the oldest incremental backup into the full backup. So with time, the first incremental backup will grow because the full backup remains untouched. But merging full and incremental backups (just like Reflect does *Edit: Reflect also doesn't do this, see @admin response) can be done manually from time to time by choosing "Actions" > "Manage Image" > "Merge Image" and then selecting the full backup and its first incremental child.

I'm not entirely sure what the "Always retain the first backup" option actually does. My first thought was that enabling this would cause the full backup to stay untouched and merge the incremental backups. And if you disable that option, I had assumed it will merge the oldest incremental into the full backup. Apparently this is not the case. Maybe this is a bug or I didn't fully understand that feature myself.

Maybe @admin (Hasleo staff) can help here and explain that option a little bit better for us.

Cheers,
al3x

[Parallax Abstraction]

Hey there, thanks for the reply!

OK, that was quite helpful actually. Manually merging the first incremental into the full manually once in a while isn't a huge problem for me. I can just set myself a reminder to do that every so often and trigger it before I go to bed.

So when I hover over the little ? icon beside the "Always retain the first backup" option, it says this: "If you need to merge the first backup version with other backup versions, please perform the backup image merge operation manually." That to me implies that if I don't check this, it handles that automatically? I'm not sure, that's where I get confused. If the devs are able to clarify that, it would help a lot but if the end result is that I can basically have what Reflect did but periodically, I'll have to trigger a manual merge back into the main file, I can live with that.

Thanks!

[al3x]

So when I hover over the little ? icon beside the "Always retain the first backup" option, it says this: "If you need to merge the first backup version with other backup versions, please perform the backup image merge operation manually." That to me implies that if I don't check this, it handles that automatically?

Yeah, that's what I was also thinking. But checked and unchecked didn't make a difference in my test. We'll see

Thanks!

You're welcome

[Froggie]

I believe all it means is that the initial backup remains permanently.  If unChecked, all retentions rules will apply normally, incl eliminating 1st backup if required.

[Parallax Abstraction]

I believe all it means is that the initial backup remains permanently.  If unChecked, all retentions rules will apply normally, incl eliminating 1st backup if required.

Yeah, that's kind of what it says but where I get confused is if say I set Full to keep 1 Backup, then set Incremental to keep 7 Backups. Will that end up deleting my full backup chain after one day then? And if I enable the "keep first backup" option, that means I'll have to manually consolidate Incremental backups into it periodically?

[Froggie]

What you describe is not a timed retention for your FULL... it's a numbered retention, it will do what you ask.  That 1st FULL will remain until the second FULL is complete, it will then be trimmed upon completion.  You're INCs will merge as your timeline moves forward (and remember, it's numbered as well, not timed).

[Parallax Abstraction]

OK, I think I follow you. I don't really care if it's set to retain Backups or Days, I just figured Backups made more sense in case there's the occasional day my machine isn't on (unlikely but it happens). So if I only have it take 1 Full and 7 Incrementals, it should keep merging the oldest Incrementals into the one Full? Should I have "Always retain the first backup" on or off to attain that effect?

Thanks!

[al3x]

It will not merge inc. into full automatically.

What Froggie describes is just that if you also do full backups occasionally, the earlier full backup will be deleted (with all its inc. backups) upon completion of the newest full backup. But if you enable the always retain option, the very first (original) full backup will be kept forever instead apparently.

[admin]

In the early versions of HBS, the image retention policy was always implemented by merging images. For example, consider the backup chain F1 I1 I2 F2 I3 I4.

Case 1: If the retention policy was set to keep 2 incremental backups, HBS would merge I1 and I2 into F1, generating a new full backup Fnew1, resulting in the chain Fnew1 F2 I3 I4.

Case 2: If the retention policy was set to keep 3 incremental backups, HBS would merge I1 into F1, generating Fnew1, resulting in the chain Fnew1 I2 F2 I3 I4.

As you can see, this approach was inefficient because it required reading data from the images to be merged (F1, I1, I2) and writing it to a new full image file Fnew1.


Around 2024, we changed the image retention policy to prioritize deleting image files rather than merging them. Using the same backup chain F1 I1 I2 F2 I3 I4 as an example:

Case 1: If the retention policy is set to keep 2 incremental backups, HBS will directly delete I1 and I2, resulting in the chain F1 F2 I3 I4.

Case 2: If the retention policy is set to keep 3 incremental backups, HBS will merge I1 and I2 into a new incremental backup Inew2, resulting in the chain F1 Inew2 F2 I3 I4.

This approach maximizes efficiency by deleting image files whenever possible, and only merges incremental backups when necessary. This is also the method used by Macrium Reflect.


From the above, you can see:

• The old method merged full backups with other backup types to generate new full backups, which was very time-consuming. The "Always retain the first backup" option was introduced in this context to prevent the first full backup from being merged with other backups.
  

• The new method only performs merge operations on incremental backups at most, greatly improving efficiency. The "Always retain the first backup" option is still retained, but it now only applies to full backups, because other backup types will never trigger the deletion of a full backup image.
  

@Parallax Abstraction, to return to your original question - how to implement a "forever forward incremental backup" policy (keeping 1 full backup + 7 incremental backups):

You simply need to set the retention policy to "keep 7 incremental backups". In the current version, when the 8th incremental backup is completed, in order to keep the latest 7 incrementals, the system will directly merge the first and second incremental backup image files. Your original full backup will not be merged or deleted. As for the "Always retain the first backup" option, you can ignore it and leave it at its default state. If you want to absolutely ensure that the first full backup is never deleted, you can check it as an extra layer of protection.


If you still have any questions, feel free to continue the discussion.