Is it possible to do a full file system level backup of the data
directory, say once a week, and differentials or incrementals daily?
I'm wondering if there are files that would normally be removed that a
restore: Full then diff/inc would not remove and perhaps
corrupt/confuse things.
Process:
Saturday: Full backup (reset archive bits) of data dir with database shutdown
Sunday: Differential (don't reset archive bits) of data dir with
database shutdown
Monday: Differential (don't reset archive bits) of data dir with
database shutdown
Wednesday: Restore to test server using Saturday's Full and Monday's
Differential.
Obviously this works for regular files/file systems; however, I'm not
sure this is a good method with postgresql as the resulting data dir
*may* (?) contain extra files (or other issues)?
Note: our database is 850GB (Windows 2008 R2 pg version 8.3.12)