Best practices when you create recovery points for use with the Granular Restore Option

Last published : Apr 02, 2026
When creating a recovery point, you should use the following guidelines:
  • Select the option to back up your computer, not the option to back up selected files and folders.
See Defining a drive-based backup.
  • When you select which drives to back up, make sure that you select all of the drives on the system.
See Protecting your Microsoft Exchange server for successful backups.
  • When you select the type of recovery point to create, you should select Recovery Point Set instead of Independent Recovery Point. This selection makes subsequent recovery points much smaller.
    Recovery point set (recommended) Schedules a base recovery point with additional recovery points that contain only the incremental changes that were made to your computer since the previous recovery point.
    Incremental recovery points are created faster than the base recovery point. They also use less storage space than an independent recovery point.
    Note: You can only have one recovery point set defined for each drive. TheRecovery point setoption is not available if you have already assigned a selected drive to an existing backup and specifiedRecovery point setas the recovery point type. This option also is unavailable if you select an unmounted drive that cannot be part of a recovery point set.
    Independent recovery point Creates a complete, independent copy of the drives that you select. This backup type typically requires more storage space, especially if you run the backup multiple times.
  • The Exchange server does not need to be turned off for a backup to run successfully. However, you should schedule the backup at a time when the server is less busy (for example, after midnight).
    Schedule Lets you select the days and a start time for when the backup should run.
    Run more than once per day Indicates that you can run the backup more than once a day to protect data that you edit or change frequently.
    Time between backups Specifies the maximum time that should occur between backups.
    Number of times Specifies the number of times per day that the backup should run.
    Automatically optimize Lets you select how often optimization should occur to help manage the disk space that is used by your backup destination.
    Start a new recovery point set Indicates how frequently a new recovery point set should be started.
    Custom Lets you customize the start time, and the days of the week or month to run the backup.
    Event Triggers - General Lets you select the type of events that automatically starts a backup.
  • If you use mount points, make sure that you select them for backup.
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About the Veritas System Recovery Granular Restore Option