Regular, sufficiently frequent backup combined with the longest possible retention of the backup media helps counter unobtrustive, "creeping" damage. Ideally you should backup all data daily and retain each backup medium for (at least) ten years. That would require 365 data carriers per annum! Naturally, that is not practicable. How can one reduce the number of data carriers required without materially reducing security?
A procedure that has proved itself over decades is based on the "three generations principle" that is often referred to as the "grandfather-father-son principle".
| • | For the first generation, use between five and seven backup media (tapes, DVDs or the like.), that are labeled "Monday“, "Tuesday“ etc. and which are reused the next week. |
| • | Put each Friday's full backupasidefor one month. These are overwritten the next month and form the second generation. You requirefive tapes for this. |
| • | A backup of each month beginning is retained for three months or, better, for an entire year. You need between three and twelve tapes for this. This is the third generation. |
It would be prudent to retain the medium with the year end for a few years longer; that would be the fourth generation.
How do you use generational backup in 7-Backup?
7-Backup allows you to apply generational backup. You can change the media yourself or alternatively you can have file folders created on the hard disk that are labeled according to the generational principle. The program then automatically creates the backups in subfolders mirroring the generational structure.
The simplest way of using the generational principle is to check the "Enable generational backup" box in the "Backup data" wizard.
Enabling this function retains backups on the backup medium for up to a year. You require a lot of disk space for this as full backups are the default position - that means that all files will be found in every backup folder. 20 of these backup folders will be created over the year as a whole. You can create your own automatic generational backup concept byspecifying variables in the destination path , thus dynamically generating the destination path.
Please note: To achieve good data security it is important to back up using different data carriers. Individual data carriers can fail or be lost. You can simply connect a new data carrier at regular intervals - the program recognizes the new backup medium and updates the backup it contains.
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