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Re: incremental backups howto?



On Fri, 2004-12-24 at 23:40 -0500, Adam Aube wrote:
> Joao Clemente wrote:
> 
> > In the latest thread about "Synchronize two servers" it was
> > talked about incremental backups. Well, can you quick-start me
> > in this topic?
> 
> An incremental backup is done by backing up all files that have changed
> since the last full or incremental backup. How this file list is tracked
> depends on the backup program used (some might use a filesystem flag,
> others might use modification timestamps).
> 
> The downside of incremental backups is that, to do a full restore, you need
> the last full backup and ALL the incremental backups since the last full.
> 
> A better alternative is a differential backup, which is all files that have
> changed since the last full backup. This is much easier to restore, because
> all you need is the last full backup and the last differential backup.

Note that "differential" is not a universally-used term.  For
example, the VMS "BACKUP /INCREMENTAL" is what you call a differ-
ential backup.

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