Windows 7 Pro Backup does not do incrementals

Hi,

You can let windows choose what to back up or you can select the individual folders, libraries, and drives that you want to back up. By default, your backups are created on a regular schedule. You can change the schedule and you can manually create a backup at any time. Once you set up Windows Backup, Windows keeps track of the files and folders that are new or modified and adds them to your backup.

I would suggest you to schedule a backup that will automatically perform an incremental backup.

Refer to the following link for scheduling backup:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-IN/windows7/Set-up-or-change-automatic-backup-settings

Backup and restore: frequently asked questions:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Back-up-and-restore-frequently-asked-questions

How does Windows choose which files to back up?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/How-does-Windows-choose-which-files-to-back-up

Hope the information was helpful and do let us know if you need any assistance in the future. We will be glad to help.

Thanks for replying.

I have tried the various approaches suggested in the three links. I still get full backups when I want only the first the be Full and all subsequent (for a few months at least) to be Incrementals.

I do manual backups not automated.  My dedicated external backup drive is 2T with Usb3.

I would like to use the same system that I used with Xp, namely, plug the dedicated backup drive into the computer only during the weekly Incremental. The reasoning has been that if the backup drive is disconnected most of the time it increases the overall reliability since lightning, surges, brownouts etc cannot hurt it if it is disconnected.

On Xp they used the NtBackup App. Though old it made the selection of Full or Incremental a user defined choice. I cannot get the same behavior out of the Win7 backup system.

I have come across many suggestions (and have read probably over 100 forum entries) and still have not found the "magic ingredient".

I did come across the suggestion below on a Microsoft forum but have so far not tried it since I perfer to stay out of the Registry. Before I attempt the below do you or anyone else have a suggestion.

Doing a Full every week means about 5 hours and 96gb each time. I really need to get the Win7 Backup to perform Incremental's.

I have tried some third party packages but were not happy with the results. Also I perfer to stay with Microsoft on this because of the complexity of the Win7 OS.

Again, appreciate your reply and would greatly appreciate any further guidance.

--John Olbert

From a MS forum--

Registry key to control enable/disable automatic switching to full backup:

Path: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsBackup\AutomaticFullBackup

Name: Enabled

Type: DWORD

Value: 0 indicates automatic full backup is disabled, non-zero indicates it is enabled

Default if not specified: 1

Registry key to control the time period when backup should automatically switch to full:

Path: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsBackup\AutomaticFullBackup

Name: TimePeriodInDays

Type: DWORD

Value: Count of days

Default if not specified: 365

Registry key to control the % of deleted/missing + older versions of files that determines whether to switch to full backup:

Path: SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsBackup\AutomaticFullBackup

Name: OlderFilesSizePercentage

Type: DWORD

Value: Percentage value from 0 to 100

Default if not specified: 50