Protecting Your Investment: Backing Up Your Data...
Differential tape backup's
Written by Dale Allen, 2005
A differential backup contains all
files that have changed since the last FULL backup. The advantage of a
differential backup is that it shortens restore time compared to a full backup
or an incremental backup. However, if you perform the differential backup too
many times, the size of the differential backup might grow to be larger than the
baseline full backup.
There is a significant, but sometimes confusing, distinction between
differential backup and incremental backup. Whereas incremental backs up all the
files modified since the last full backup or incremental backup, differential
backup offers a middle ground by backing up all the files that have changed
since the last full backup. That is where it gets its name: it backs up
everything that's different since the last full backup.
Restoring a differential backup is a faster process than restoring an
incremental backup because only two backup container files are needed: the
latest full backup and the latest differential.
Use differential backup if you have a reasonable amount of time to perform
backups. The upside is that only two backup container files are needed to
perform a complete restore. The downside is if you run multiple differential
backups after your full backup, you're probably including some files in each
differential backup that were already included in earlier differential backups,
but haven't been recently modified.
Advantages:
- Restore is faster than restoring from incremental backup
- Backing up is faster than a full backup
- The storage space requirements are lower than for full backup
Disadvantages:
- Restore is slower than restoring from full backup
- Backing up is slower than incremental backup
- The storage space requirements are higher than for incremental backup
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