54 Copyright © Acronis International GmbH, 2002-2015
Restrictions
Simplified file naming is not available if you back up to Acronis Secure Zone or Acronis Cloud Storage.
When using simplified file naming, the following functionality is not available:
Setting up full, incremental and differential backups within a single backup plan. You need to
create separate backup plans for each type of backup.
Setting up replication of backups.
Setting up retention rules.
Setting up regular conversion of backups to a virtual machine.
Converting an incremental or differential backup into a full one.
Restrictions on archive names
The archive name cannot end with a number.
The FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS file systems do not allow the following characters in the file name:
backslash (\), slash (/), colon (:), asterisk (*), question mark (?), quotation mark ("), less than
sign (<), greater than sign (>), and pipe (|).
4.3.1 The [DATE] variable
If you specify the [DATE] variable in the archive name, the file name of each backup will include that
backup’s creation date.
When using this variable, the first backup of a new day will be a full backup. Before creating the next
full backup, the software deletes all backups taken earlier that day. Backups taken before that day
are kept. This means you can store multiple full backups with or without incremental ones, but no
more than one full backup per day. You can sort the backups by date. You can also use a script to
copy, move, or delete the older backups.
The value of this variable is the current date surrounded by brackets ([]). The date format depends on
the regional options on the machine. For example, if the date format is year-month-day, the value for
January 31, 2012, is [2012-01-31]. Characters that are not supported in a file name, such as slashes
(/), are replaced with underscores (_).
You can place this variable anywhere in the archive name. You can use both lowercase and
uppercase letters in this variable.
Examples
Example 1. Suppose that you perform incremental backups twice a day (at midnight and noon) for
two days, starting on January 31, 2012. The archive name is MyArchive-[DATE], the date format is
year-month-day. Here is the list of backup files after day two:
MyArchive-[2012-01-31].tib (full, created on January 31 at midnight)
MyArchive-[2012-01-31]2.tib (incremental, created on January 31 at noon)
MyArchive-[2012-02-01].tib (full, created on February 1 at midnight)
MyArchive-[2012-02-01]2.tib (incremental, created on February 1 at noon)
Example 2. Suppose that you perform full backups, with the same schedule, archive name, and date
format as in the previous example. Then, the list of backup files after day two is the following:
MyArchive-[2012-01-31].tib (full, created on January 31 at noon)
MyArchive-[2012-02-01].tib (full, created on February 1 at noon)
