Table of Contents
prune timeframe examples
The borg documentation outlines timeframes pretty well, but since you're already here, I'll give you a few examples to get you started. The default configuration file includes this line as an example and pretty decent default value:
borgPruneSettings="--keep-within=14d --keep-daily=30 --keep-weekly=12 --keep-monthly=12"
I use the long-form parameters because they are very self explanatory. In this example:
- Regardless of other options, keep any backups made in the last 14 days (automated, manual, accidental, everything);
- Keep the most recent backup made each day for the last 30 days;
- Keep the most recent backup made each week for 12 weeks; and
- Keep the most recent backup made each month for 12 months.
There are quirks with how borg counts days and you need to remember that earlier timeframes protect and push later ones. For example, if an end-of-month and end-of-week backup coincide, the end-of-week will 'push' the monthly backups back. Please refer to the documentation for better examples.
other examples
Preserve the last 30 days regardless and then 16 weeks thereafter:
borgPruneSettings="--keep-within=30d --keep-weekly=16"
Preserve the last 15 end-of-day, 4 weeks end-of-week (will start counting after the 15-day period!) and then 6 months end-of-month thereafter:
borgPruneSettings="--keep-daily=15d --keep-weekly=4 --keep-monthly=6"
a note about 'keep-within'
You may notice that I use 'keep-within' and 'keep-daily'. keep-within means all backups made within the specified timeframe whereas keep-daily means the last backup made on that day. Let's say I'm doing a migration or something, I might make 5 backups all on the migration day. keep-within ensures that all 5 of those backups are kept and does not count them toward the the single keep-daily that will also be made.