Strategy for making incremental backups
The right answer depends on questions like:
- How much space is available on your backup device
- How long do you want to keep the backups around?
- How often does your data change?
- What is the "Rate of change" (How much data will change between full backups?) I've read a 5% rate of change is typical for many businesses. Your personal files may be more or less frequent then that.
Unless you have special needs, try to keep your schedule simple. Complex backup schedules can cause confusion during the restore, and you don't want more confusion during the restore.
Many backup products offer a simple, default backup schedule similar to the following. This can be easily adopted to your future needs.
- Monthly fulls, keep for 1 year. Done on a Sunday.
- Weekly fulls, keep for 1 month. Done on a Sunday.
Daily incrementals, keep for 2 weeks.
Hourly incremental sounds too frequent for most people, as the files don't change that frequently.