[SOLVED] Incremental Backups Restore Unwanted Deleted Files?

[killerkoz]

Hi Forum!

I've been reading through the Security and Performance FAQs and have a question: Do incremental backups restore unwanted deleted files? Let's say, for example, I did a full backup on Sunday night and perform incremental backups on Monday and Tuesday night, where I delete a file during the day on Tuesday. Wednesday comes, catastrophe occurs and I restore my site from the full backup on Sunday and incremental backups from Monday and Tuesday. Does my restored site contain the deleted file? If so, I thought this might be a security concern, e.g. when old extensions are removed from the site and would be good reason to perform full backups (without the deleted file) as often as I could to prevent the deleted file being restored! Thanks in advance for your help,

Cheers, Rob

[AMurray]

I've never used Incremental backups only full back up each time, but I would guess, that you could restore only the Tuesday incremental and that would take the site back to working order to that point in time, after you deleted the mentioned files.

Not sure how you restore incremental backups - using Kickstart, or just through the akeeba backup itself (uploading the JPA file etc). In my experience to restore entire site using Kickstart usually requires the full backup JPA file.

But it depends what backup tool you use - Akeeba or something else?

[leolam]

Don't use incremental backups. Use Akeebaback Pro up and get a free account at Amazon S3 or Dropbox and load your backups fully automated from Akeeba's cronjob

Leo

[Tonie]

In all backup applications I know, your restore will indeed contain the deleted file(s) from tuesday during the afternoon. This will normally give you two options:

- remove the file(s) again manually
- if you back-up appliction allows it, do a point in time restore before the file(s) were deleted.

[killerkoz]

Thanks for the replies guys! Appreciate the feedback and advice. Ok, so for the benefit of others, the answer to the question is yes - incremental backups DO restore unwanted deleted files. However, I'm getting the hint that incremental backups are not the best strategy (particularly based on your advice leolam, my site will be small and I've read your posts before, you're one of the Joomla! Gods in my eyes!). I'll go ahead and use Akeeba Backup and DropBox to create full backups (I assume that was the summary of the advice). Thank-you all,

Cheers, Rob