Full Backup Automatically Converts to an Incremental Backup

Full backups automatically convert to incremental backups even when you explicitly select the Full backup option.

Symptoms

If you selected the Fullbackup option (Advanced Backup Options dialog box), when you run a backup job, an incremental backup runs instead followed by a synthetic full backup.

Causes

In the Subclient Propertiesdialog box (Retention tab), if the number of days you specify in the Use storage policy copy retention after n days box is 1 or higher, then any full backup is converted to an incremental backup followed by a synthetic full backup.

The Full backup is converted to an incremental backup, then followed by a synthetic full backup, to honor the number of days specified in the Use storage policy copy retention after n days box and to carry forward the deleted items for the specified number of days within the current backup cycle.

However, the first backup job runs as a Fullbackup.

Resolution

To run full backups, change the retention setting to Use storage policy copy retention. For more information on how to configure and use the retention settings, see Data Aging and Retention for Laptop Backups and Retention Options for Deleted Files.