Full Backup, Incremental Backup and Differential Backup On Windows

Full backup is the starting point for all other backups and contains all the data in the folders and files that are selected to be backed up. Because the full backup stores all files and folders, frequent full backups result in faster and simpler restore operations. Remember that when you choose other backup types, restore jobs may take longer

Incremental backup
Incremental backup stores all files changed since the last FULL, DIFFERENTIAL OR INCREMENTAL backup. The advantage of an incremental backup is that it takes the least time to complete. During a restore operation, each incremental backup is processed, which could result in a lengthy restore job.

For example, if you did a full backup on Friday and incrementals on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and the PC crashes Thursday morning, you would need all four backup container files: Friday's full backup plus the incremental backup for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. As a comparison, if you had done differential backup on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, then to restore on Thursday morning you'd only need Friday's full backup plus Wednesday's differential.

Advantages:
1. Backing up is the fastest
2. The storage space requirements are the lowest
Disadvantages:
1. Restore is the slowest

Differential backup
Differential backup contains all files that have changed since the last FULL backup . The advantage of a differential backup is that it shortens restore time compared to a full backup or an incremental backup. However, if you perform the differential backup too many times, the size of the differential backup might grow to be larger than the baseline full backup.

Use differential backup if you have a reasonable amount of time to perform backups. The upside is that only two backup container files are needed to perform a complete restore. The downside is if you run multiple differential backups after your full backup, you're probably including some files in each differential backup that were already included in earlier differential backups, but haven't been recently modified.

Advantages:
1. Restore is faster than restoring from incremental backup
2. Backing up is faster than a full backup
3. The storage space requirements are lower than for full backup
Disadvantages:
1. Restore is slower than restoring from full backup
2. Backing up is slower than incremental backup
3. The storage space requirements are higher than for incremental backup

Credit Information: backup4all.com

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Full Backup, Incremental Backup and Differential Backup On Windows