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Quote from the article "Backup Version and Space Management in Windows Server Backup" on Microsoft TechNet:

If the backup storage location is full, Windows Server Backup automatically deletes the oldest backup version to make space for the current backup.

On Windows 7 Professional x64, is it possible to disable this feature, i.e. to tell Wbadmin to never delete backups?

Instead, if the backup volume is full, I'd like to get an error message.

feklee
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    Why? I can't shake the suspicion that you're doing it wrong, if you're trying to never delete backups. Why would you rather have a current backup fail than delete an old backup? – HopelessN00b Apr 17 '14 at 17:11
  • @HopelessN00b This is for a data partition. The `Wbadmin` offline backup would be set up in addition to an online backup. One of those backups is allowed to fail at any time. However, for the offline backup, revisions of files should be kept indefinitely. The action in case the backup volume is full is to either replace it or to move the data to another volume. – feklee Apr 17 '14 at 21:01
  • Well, the solution to that is to keep an eye on the freespace in your "backup" volume, and wrap wbadmin into a script that doesn't call it if there's insufficient freespace to perform the backup. – HopelessN00b Apr 17 '14 at 21:12

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No it is not possible. Windows Server backup is a simple, free backup tool that works well enough, but lacks the flexible, robust, granular features of an enterprise-grade backup solution. WSB monitors the free space left on the drive and if the drive is full, it deletes the oldest backup before taking a new one. And that's all you get. If, for some reason, you want backups to start failing when the drive is full instead of taking another backup, then you'll need a more robust backup application that allows you to make that choice.

Ryan Ries
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    I am currently investigating various solutions, but haven't yet found one that does space-efficient incremental backups. As I eventually [found out](http://superuser.com/a/745036/35011), `wbadmin` does incremental backups simply by utilizing Windows's *Shadow Copy* in the backup medium, which is very efficient. – feklee Apr 26 '14 at 16:27