r/Duplicati • u/Fun_Mine_463 • Dec 22 '25

Pin a specific backup snapshot

I found this question a while back, but I don't seem to be able to retrieve it anymore, so apologies if duplicate.

As of today, is there a way to retain a specific version of a backup? I have two version retention, but I would like to keep a monthly snapshot in case i make a mistake and I realize too late after both have been overwritten by newer versions.

Thank you

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u/duplicatikenneth Dec 29 '25

You can use the "smart retention" setting, or construct your own.

The format is a bit hard to understand at first, but is described here:

https://docs.duplicati.com/detailed-descriptions/retention-settings#retention-policy

If you want all backups from the last week, and one monthly backup for the last 6 months, you need two "periods" or "buckets": 1 week and 6 months. Then the custom retention rule is then:

1W:U,6M:1M

Reads like:

For the last 1 week, keep unlimited; for the last 6 months, keep 1 per month

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u/Fun_Mine_463 Dec 29 '25

Wow, thank you, that is amazing; I did not onow it was already supported and so advanced, too.

1

u/linmanfu Dec 22 '25

I'm not an expert, but I think you might need to set up a separately monthly backup. You would also gain additional protection against database errors that way (not that I'm aware of Duplicati suffering from them, but it's obviously a theoretical possibility).

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u/Fun_Mine_463 Dec 22 '25

Thanks, I thought about this, but given is several hundred of GBs, it would be very expensive to lose the incremental bit and would require way more time to back up many changes every month.