Difference Between Incremental and Differential Backup

In our digital day and age, the importance of data protection is at an all time high. Because most of our information is stored in digital format, the chances of having them corrupted, lost, or compromised has become a serious problem for many. This is why people have turned to backing up their information to ensure and secure its safety.

There are different kinds of backup methods, but the most common are differential and incremental backups. While both of these methods offer the same results, they differ in the manner that they perform the backup process. Want to find out which backup method would be best for your needs? Find out with these short pointers on incremental and differential backups.

What is a Differential Backup?

Before you can perform a differential backup, it’s important that you first perform a full backup. A full backup means that you will gather all the data you have on your device and back it up as a collective whole. After you’ve performed your full backup, you can them perform a differential backup to protect your information until your next full backup.

If, for example, you performed a full backup on a Monday, your device would perform a differential backup the next day, Tuesday, which would only copy the files that changed since Monday. On Wednesday, the device would backup the files from Wednesday and Tuesday. With a differential backup, information would be copied as a whole since the last full backup was performed.

What is an Incremental Backup?

Much like a differential backup, it’s necessary to first perform a full backup before you can perform an incremental backup. With this particular backup method, information is copied from the last date of backup, whether it was full or not. For example, you performed a full backup on a Monday. Your device would copy all the files that changed on Tuesday. On Wednesday, only data that changed since Tuesday would be copied.

What’s the Difference?

Both of these methods aim for the same results, but only differ when it comes to processing speed and size of transfer. The main difference is that a differential backup will copy bigger files as time goes on. This is because it backs up all the information since the last full backup. An incremental backup on the other hand, will only copy files that changed since the last incremental back up, which makes for a faster backup time as it handles much less data than a differential backup.

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