Retention
Caution
Retention permanently deletes older backup files from the target directory.
Its use is strongly discouraged for important, valuable, confidential, regulated, business-critical, or irreplaceable data.
Software defects, incorrect settings, incorrect paths, unexpected file naming, or other failures may cause unintended and irreversible data loss.
Do not rely on the deletion preview as a guarantee that every destructive action has been identified correctly.
Always maintain an independent, verified, and recoverable backup that EasyVersionBackup cannot modify or delete.
Read the full Disclaimer.
Retention runs only after a successful backup and only when it is enabled globally and for the individual backup pair.
Retention must first be enabled in:
Settings -> General -> Retention
Activating it requires manual text confirmation.
It must then be enabled separately in the backup-pair settings.
Example:
Keep last backups: 10
The newest 10 matching backups are kept.
Example:
Keep backups for: 30 days
Backups newer than the configured age are kept.
A backup is eligible for deletion when at least one enabled rule allows deletion.
A backup is eligible for deletion only when all enabled rules allow deletion.
Selected tags are protected from Retention.
Example:
Final
Backups tagged Final are excluded from deletion.
Before Retention deletes files, a separate confirmation dialog lists the affected destination files.
The available choices are:
-
Cancel
- Stops the complete backup process.
-
Continue without Destination Cleanup
- Creates the backup without deleting old destination backups.
-
Continue (delete!)
- Creates the backup and permanently deletes the listed files.
Retention activation, deactivation, confirmations, and settings changes are written to:
<application directory>\Logs\EasyVersionBackup_system.log
Deleted backup files are also recorded in the backup log.
EasyVersionBackup does not provide an integrated or automatic restore function.
Before enabling Retention, verify manually that older backups can actually be restored.
[IMAGE: Retention settings]
[IMAGE: Retention confirmation dialog]
