Incremental backups faster?

KingmanMe

Active Member
PartnerNOC
Feb 19, 2003
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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_

Well-Known Member
Apr 26, 2002
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Arizona
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/linux/RHL-8.0-Manual/admin-primer/s1-disaster-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

Active Member
PartnerNOC
Feb 19, 2003
33
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156
Thanks Robert :)

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

TheVoice

Well-Known Member
Feb 7, 2002
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the best thing about incremental backups is the fact that it doesn't compress the data. Compressing is the reason backups can take hours.