
10-May-2008	Home \| Backup Types

Basic Backup Types implemented in D_back software

Five built-in backup types (Full, Stack, Advanced Stack, Incremental, Differential) are an incredibly versatile and capable to satisfy requirements both of beginners and advanced users.

These backup types are a fundamental basis of our tool. They are completely applicable to backing up files both from a personal computer, local network and remote FTP, and allows you to customise the best backup strategy for any kind of your data according to your requirements.

D_back backup types config sheet

Full backup

This is the elementary type of backing up. Each time the newly created backup file replaces the old one.

Stack backup

This archive consists of the last created backup and N previous versions. (N - is a stack size parameter). This N previous versions are organized in stack manner. Their filenames are differs with suffix "_K" added to filename (K is in range 1-N).
Than older the backup, that greater the K. All backup files are located in the same directory.

Advanced stack backup

The structure of this archive is like stack archive with one addition: it allows not to store the unchanged files in the old versions of backup copies.

Incremental backup

This is a backup in which only the files that have been modified since the last backup are copied. It consists of "full backup" and N folowing sequental incremental backups. (where N - is a stack size parameter). The first backup should include all files - a "full backup". The next backup copy could also be a "full backup" but it is usually much quicker to do, because only files which have been changed since the last backing up will be included in the incremental backup. When N incremental copies will be created, at the next step all old backup files will be deleted and the cycle will be repeated from the beginning.

Exists possibility to save the full backup at the beginning of the new cycle. If an additional parameter save full backups it checked, then the full backup is renamed and saved in the same directory.

Differential backup

This backup is consists of two files - full and differential backup.
At first the program creates full backup. Next executions generate a differential backup - the backup copy of changed or newly added files since the last full backing up. If the volume of differential copy exceeds N percents of the full copy (Make a full backup only if ... parameter) or at least N days has passed since the full backup creation (Make a full backup only after ... parameter) then the program begins a new cycle with a full backup.

The main difference between incremental and differential backups

The incremental backup saves several intermediate versions of files which have been modified or created since the last backing up.
The differential backup saves files which are not included in the full backup (newly created or added files) or which are differ from the same files in the full backup. (The files are considered identical, if they have equal size and date-time stamp)