Backup Combinations

Normal backup require more storage space and also require more time to perform the backup operation. To avoid performing normal backup (full backup) daily, we can combine different types of backups together. Two common types of combinations are explained below.

Normal and differential backups

The first day of the week (Sunday) after office hours a normal backup is performed, and on Monday to Friday after office hours, differential backups are performed. As explained in the previous lesson differential backups do not clear the archive attribute, which means that each backup includes all changes since Sunday. If there is a hardware failure on Friday, after restoring the hardware you only need to restore the normal backup from Sunday and the differential backup from Thursday.

Normal and incremental backups

The first day of the week (Sunday) after office hours a normal backup is performed, and on Monday to Friday after office hours incremental backups are performed. Incremental backups clear the archive attribute, which means that each backup includes only the files that changed since the previous backup. If there is a hardware failure on Friday, after restoring the hardware you need to restore the normal backup from Sunday and each of the incremental backups, from Monday to Friday.