How to Delete Files in the Backup Folder
You may freely delete files and folders inside the backup folder. BackupChain backup software
fills the gaps next time it runs
However, there is one thing you need to watch when deleting:
If you have backup files that use deduplication, they need to be deleted in groups.
This does not apply to regular file backup, only those files with deduplication will show up as illustrated below.
Sort the folder by date ascending and you'll see a pattern, as shown in the example below:
Monday: MyVM.vhd.1.fastneurondelta 100 GB (compressed, full copy) Tuesday: MyVM.vhd.0.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, incremental delta) Wednesday: MyVM.vhd.0.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, incremental delta) Thursday: MyVM.vhd.0.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, incremental delta) Friday: MyVM.vhd.0.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, incremental delta) Saturday: MyVM.vhd.0.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, incremental delta) |
Deduplication Group #1 |
Sunday: MyVM.vhd.1.fastneurondelta 100 GB (compressed, full copy) Monday: MyVM.vhd.0.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, incremental delta) Tuesday: MyVM.vhd.0.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, incremental delta) Wednesday: MyVM.vhd.0.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, incremental delta) Thursday: MyVM.vhd.0.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, incremental delta) Friday: MyVM.vhd.0.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, incremental delta) |
Deduplication Group #2 |
Saturday: MyVM.vhd.1.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, full copy) Monday: MyVM.vhd.0.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, incremental delta) Tuesday: MyVM.vhd.0.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, incremental delta) Wednesday: MyVM.vhd.0.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, incremental delta) Thursday: MyVM.vhd.0.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, incremental delta) Friday: MyVM.vhd.0.fastneurondelta 5 GB (compressed, incremental delta) |
Deduplication Group #3 |
You'll want to delete entire groups at a time or just increments, but you can't have increments alone without the full copy they are referring to.
In the example above you could delete the oldest deduplication group 1+2 by hand without any issues.
Group #3 requires the latest full copy (Saturday) in order to restore
About BackupChain
BackupChain includes a wide range of backup tools for various scenarios, such as cloud backup, FTP backup, USB backup, Linux VM backup, and Hyper-V file backup.
BackupChain offers a range of server freeware tools as well including a tool that can map FTP to drive letters, called DriveMaker.
A growing fan-base of BackupChain uses its live backup, virtual machine backup and deduplication features that are critical for all kinds of virtual machine related backup tasks, such as Hyper-V backup, VMware backup, or VirtualBox backup.
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