Are there retention rules for backups done with Windows Server 2012 R2?
I am using 5 USB HDDs for Mon-Fri image backups of my server running Server 2012 R2. The software, after accepting a destination HDD for the backups, does not allow an assigned drive letter (to protect the data from erasure?) so one cannot tell exactly how many backups are retained. Are there retention rules? Are old backups deleted? Thank you.
ASKER
Thank you! Indeed the information is there. I have set up full image backups, rotating HDDs. If there is a different HDD from the previous day, will the backup be full or incremental? Is there a way to get full backup every day? I do not want to have to string together several drives to complete a restore! I apologize if my question is naïve.
Each backup will be incremental but only on the one disk. You will be able to restore a full backup from any single disk.
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ASKER
Thank you!
Connect a backup drive to the server.
Open Server Manager and go to Tools -> Windows Servers Backup
There will be a section titled "Destination usage".
It will tell you how many backups are available on the connected disk.
If you click on "View details" you can see the backup dates/times.
Depending on how you have the backups configured there should be many backups on the disk. By default they are incremental so each new backup won't take a lot of space.
Yes, old backups are deleted to make room for new backups.