[GENERAL] "Resurrected" data files - problem?

We use a tape backup software that does "incremental backups" as follows:

• In a full backup, all files are backed up.
• In an incremental backup, only the files with modification date after the last backup are backed up.

Now when such a backup is restored, you first have to restore the full backup, and then the incremental backup.

The problem is that files which were deleted between the full and the incremental backup will get "resurrected" after such a restore.

So if we perform our database backups with incremental backups as described above, we could end up with additional files after the restore, because PostgreSQL files can get deleted (e.g. during DROP TABLE or TRUNCATE TABLE).

My question is:

Could such "resurrected" files (data files, files in pg_xlog, pg_clog or elsewhere) cause a problem for the database (other than the obvious one that there may be unnecessary files about that consume disk space)?

Yours,
Laurenz Albe

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