User`s guide

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Limited storage
If you do not want to arrange a vast amount of space to store a huge archive, you may set up a GFS
scheme so as to make your backups more short-lived, at the same time ensuring that your
information can be recovered in case of an accidental data loss.
Suppose that you need to:
 Perform backups at the end of each working day
 Be able to recover an accidentally deleted or inadvertently modified file if this has been
discovered relatively quickly
 Have access to a weekly backup for 10 days after it was created
 Keep monthly backups for half a year.
Backup scheme parameters can then be set up as follows.
 Start backup at: 6:00 PM
 Back up on: Workdays
 Weekly/monthly: Friday
 Keep backups:
 Daily: 1 week
 Weekly: 10 days
 Monthly: 6 months
With this scheme, you will have a week to recover a previous version of a damaged file from a daily
backup; as well as 10-day access to weekly backups. Each monthly full backup will be available for six
months since the creation date.
Work schedule
Suppose you are a part-time financial consultant and work in a company on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
On these days, you often make changes to your financial documents, statements, and update the
spreadsheets etc. on your laptop. To back up this data, you may want to:
 Track changes to the financial statements, spreadsheets, etc. performed on Tuesdays and
Thursdays (daily incremental backup).
 Have a weekly summary of file changes since last month (Friday weekly differential backup).
 Have a monthly full backup of your files.
Moreover, assume that you want to retain access to all backups, including the daily ones, for at least
six months.
The following GFS scheme suits such purposes:
 Start backup at: 11:30 PM
 Back up on: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday
 Weekly/monthly: Friday
 Keep backups:
 Daily: 6 months
 Weekly: 6 months
 Monthly: 5 years