Checkpoints and Versioning

[bdh13579]

I have enabled synthetic backups (which includes partial file updating, zip each file individually, and filename encoding) in my Syncovery job and have enabled the option to use weekly checkpoints relative to the previous higher checkpoint (week/month/quarter). The help file says that a checkpoint is an incremental backup just like the daily backups but includes changed blocks over a longer period of time.

1) Let's say I have a 500 MB database file that increases in size by 5 MB every day and I run the Syncovery job every night. What will happen to all of the incrementals at the end of the week? Will they be deleted and combined into one file?

2) What effect does the option keep older versions when replacing have when I'm using partial file updating and checkpoints on my 500 MB database (which is above the threshold of 400 KB required for block-level copying)?

Thank you for the help.

[superflexible]

Hello,

yes, the weekly checkpoint file will include all the data from the week's incrementals, so that the daily files are no longer needed for a restore. However, the daily files are not deleted immediately. They will be cleaned up much later, according to the setting:

X Remove unneeded incrementals older than X days

To prevent the number of files on the backup location from growing indefinitely, even older checkpoints can be removed by the program, if it determines that they are no longer needed for a restore. You can choose to "keep all checkpoints", or to "thin out checkpoints dynamically", or to "remove all unneeded checkpoints".

Thin out dynamically means that some checkpoints will be kept longer than others, to allow you a reasonable amount of flexibility in terms of the ability to restore and older version of the file. All of the most recent checkpoints will be kept but fewer of the older ones.

[probspot3]

Hello,

sorry for digging up an old thread, but I'm currently evaluating Syncovery and hoping to purchase it afterwards.

I have a similar scenario as the original poster: a VM with a 60GB disk, which I would like to incrementally backup daily.

Looks like the Synthetic Backup is exactly the feature I need as it saves changed blocks as new ZIP files - perfect from the performance point of view.

My question is: how are old incrementals being managed? To be more specific, after one month of daily incrementals I would like to merge them with the initial 60GB ZIP. Can Syncovery automatically do that or do I need to delete everything and perform a fresh full backup of the 60GB VM?

As far as I understand, checkpoints is an optional feature which lets me merge small incrementals into larger ones, but it does _not_ merge anything with the original big file, does it?

Thank you

[superflexible]

Hello,

yes that's correct, the checkpoints sum up a few daily incrementals in one bigger file, so after a while, unnecessary old daily backups can be deleted. But currently there is no feature to merge them with the original backed up file automatically. It would only make sense if the backup storage is local storage, otherwise it would be too slow. Maybe we will make it available in a future version.

[probspot3]

Thank you for the swift reply. My backup location is a 128GB SDXC card, so yes, it is a local storage.

If Syncovery does not merge the incrementals with the original file, the only remaining option is to delete everything and perform a fresh full backup, which is fine as well.

I saw that for this task someone on this forum used another profile which synchronized an empty folder to the backup location, thus deleting everything there. Is there a better/recommended way to automatically clean up the incrementals and perform a full backup before I turn to this hack?

[superflexible]

I would probably use two SDCARDS, switch and format them manually from time to time.