Hey All,

I have a few questions on the required frequency for "full backups" on servers that use differential block level backups. My understanding is that a full backup will help prevent image corruption in a backup that is caused by only backing up changed data. I may be incorrect. My questions are whether the image based full backup is actually required, and if so how often should these full backups be taken. Currently, the full backups are set to run weekly.

The reason I am asking is that when the full backups are running the daily differential backups do not run. Some of the locations we support don't have the fastest internet speed, while also having a lot of data. This causes the full backup to run for multiple days to even a week! During the time that the full backup is running none of the daily differential block level backups run. Could a secondary backup plan be run while the full backup is running(run both backups at the same time)? By this, I mean not creating a duplicate backup that doubles the backup size. If this is the wrong thinking do let me know.

To summarize I am having issues keeping the backups current. The full backup option is taking to long to complete causing the daily backups to be skipped. Has anyone seen this before? and if so are there some best practices to follow?

Again I really appreciate your answers and support.
Thanks,
Caleb