In the field of data backup and recovery,
incremental backup differs from a full backup in that only changes since the last backup are stored. An incremental backup requires an initial full backup to be performed, after which incremental backups update the initial backup with all elapsed changes, generally creating a recovery point at each step or "snapshot" of the system to which it can be restored.
Since incremental backup stores only those data objects which have been modified since the last backup operation, it requires far less time to perform and can even be automated on a
scheduled basis.
Differential backup differs from incremental backup in that all changes made since the last full backup are stored, rather than only changes made since the last backup operation of any form.
Since more and more enterprise and SMBs are moving to
remote backup using
disk-to-disk backup technology, incremental backup offers the most efficient way to protect business data, as it requires less time and consumes less bandwidth. While still requiring an initial full backup,
remote backup service providers such as CRC DataProtection
give customers the option of performing initial full backups locally, shipping their backup appliance to a secured
data center facility where it is transferred to hard disk, and then performing only incremental backups via IP-WAN thereafter.
