Langmeier Backup

Imagine the following scenario: You have connected an external hard drive to your computer, which you use exclusively for backing up your data. This approach is highly recommended, as a dedicated backup drive should only contain backup copies—any other files stored on it would not be included in your backup routine.

Modern hard drives offer enormous storage capacity . While people once spoke in terms of kilobytes, today we deal with terabytes, and in the near future, zettabytes (that’s 10 ²¹ bytes). With so much space available, you can easily store a complete backup on your external hard drive every time. This is a solid and reliable backup strategy.

But what happens when your hard drive eventually runs out of space and there is no room left for new backups? Ideally, your backup software should automatically remove older full backups from the drive as soon as storage becomes insufficient. This ensures that there is always enough space available for new backups, while still retaining several previous versions for added security.

This feature has been available in Langmeier Backup for several versions, and it is implemented with a simple yet effective trick: In the backup destination path—where you specify the folder for your backups—you can manually insert a variable. For example, you can use the date as a variable, resulting in a path like this:

Backup target path: D:\Backup from [dd.mm.yyyy]

To ensure that older backup folders are deleted when storage space runs low, you can use the FreeUp option. This option must be written in lowercase and appended to the date variable with a space, as shown below:

D:\Backup from [dd.mm.yyyy freeup]

With this setup, the backup program creates a separate folder for each backup run and automatically deletes the oldest backup folder if there is not enough space on the hard drive. This guarantees that at least one backup folder always remains on the drive. However, if only one backup folder is left and there is still insufficient space, the backup process will be aborted with the error message “Too little space.” This precaution prevents the loss of your last remaining backup.

By using this simple trick, you can be confident that your data will always be safely stored on your external hard drive—even as you continue to create new backups.

Look it up further: external hard disk, Langmeier Backup, Data backup

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