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I use a portable usb hard disk for backup. On windows, I use synctoy to sync files from my computer to this backup disk every month. I've heard about incremental backup many times; however, I've never got time to learn about it.

Question:

  1. Is there any advantages in using incremental backup against the sync method?
  2. Will incremental backup take more spaces? How about the backup speed?
  3. What backup tools are easy to use on Windows?
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  • Full Backup = performs a backup of all files, usually an archive bit is flagged to identify that the file has been backup or uses a database to keep track of the files.

  • Partial Backup = performs a backup of the files which have been modified since the Full Back. Usually compares with the archive flag or the database.

Partial Backup are quick since it's only backing up the modified files.

The problem arises when it's time to restore. You need to restore all the partial backup in reverse order and then finish off with the full backup.

There are many discussion about Full vs Partial Backup. This has been a discussion from the beginning of time.

Some will perform a Full Backup once a week like on Sunday then perform Daily partial backup. The problem is the retention period, because you only have at max one weeks worth of stuff.

Here is an interesting Article

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  • Thank you very much. From you explaination, I think I will stick with the sync method I've been using. Sync tools like SyncToy on windows, and rsync on linux are very fast. (Much faster and easier to manage than manual copy/paste)
    – Nick
    Commented Sep 10, 2015 at 12:16

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