Backup retention for Vista Business

[RRinTetons]

I have a backup set that was created over a year ago. It's filled the device I use for backup storage. It appears that Vista's built in backup utility does a full and diff's for the set, such that I can't just clean off the oldest backups and go on. If that's so, how do I:

1) reset the backup set so it takes a fresh full and starts over again, or,

2) start the whole thing over manually?

I don't find anything in the FAQ's here on this topic, nor in a general Google search, so either it's so obvious that I'm a complete wanker for having missed it, or nobody else is do backups!

-
Richard Ray
Jackson Hole Mountain Resort

 

[linney]

See if this command run from an elevated command prompt "wbadmin delete catalog" and then answer 'yes' to the question gets you sorted.

Before you do so check out the source of this information at -

Vista's 'Backup Computer' feature

http://forum.sysinternals.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=13412

See if the additional step mentioned last thing in this Server Backup article works in Vista?

"The only problem now was that the Windows Server Backup UI still displayed messages relating to the previous backup (see screenshot above). The source of these messages is the Backup event log, as shown in the screenshot below. If you clear the event log the messages are removed from the Windows Server Backup UI. "

How to remove backups created by Windows Server Backup

http://www.open-a-socket.com/index....ove-backups-created-by-windows-server-backup/

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsBackup

This offers you the option to reset the backup configuration back to default via the Registry.

How to Reset the Backup Files Configuration in Windows 7

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/632-backup-user-system-files-reset-default-configuration.html

How to reset Windows Vista "Complete PC Backup"

http://blog.loxal.net/2009/01/how-to-reset-windows-vista-pc-backup.html

How to back up and restore the registry in Windows

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/322756

 

[RRinTetons]

wbadmin did the trick, thanks.


-
Richard Ray
Jackson Hole Mountain Resort