Incremental backups faster?

[KingmanMe]

The backup process seems to take quite a while on one of the servers. Would it be faster to change to incremental backups (daily) or would that take just as long/longer?

[Robert_]

Yes incremental would be faster.

hope this helps.


Do you keep an older archive ie older that one day like a monthy backup just incase.


Source: http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...r-backups.html

Incremental Backups
Unlike full backups, incremental backups first look to see whether a file's modification time is more recent than its last backup time. If it is not, that file has not been modified since the last backup and can be skipped this time. On the other hand, if the modification date is more recent than the last backup date, the file has been modified and should be backed up.

Incremental backups are used in conjunction with an occasional full backup (for example, a weekly full backup, with daily incrementals).

The primary advantage gained by using incremental backups is that the incremental backups run more quickly than full backups. The primary disadvantage to incremental backups is that restoring any given file may mean going through one or more incremental backups until the file is found. When restoring a complete file system, it is necessary to restore the last full backup and every subsequent incremental backup.

In an attempt to alleviate the need to go through every incremental backup, a slightly different approach was implemented. This is known as the differential backup.



Regards, Rob

[KingmanMe]

Thanks Robert

Do you (or anyone else) know how the WHM restoration copes with restoring from incremental backups as opposed to full backups?

[TheVoice]

the best thing about incremental backups is the fact that it doesn't compress the data. Compressing is the reason backups can take hours.