Unclear on when to prepare the data for restore

Despite having found a bunch of backup scripts on this forum, I’m not quite happy with them, and how they behave, so I’ve decided to write my own that is in more in tune with our requirements. Most of the scripts on this forum rely on date and time stamps, or require an input of sorts. I’m working towards fully automatic daily full backups, with a random number of incremental backups (5 minutes between each incremental, all the way out to hourly. The frequency of Depends on the customer, their attitude, and their machines performance).

I’m a bit unclear on the required steps to create incremental backups for a proper restore at any point in time, or when to trigger certain events.

Do I prepare the data right after each full/incremental backup, or, can it sit in an unprepared state until I need to perform the restore?

This script I’m working on is going to be handling the restore as well, so I just need to know where to put in the appropriate activities the script needs to handle.