- Overview
- Understanding Schedule Templates
Overview
When creating backups with Macrium Reflect, whether this is a disk image or file and folder backup, there are three types that can be created. Understanding these backup types helps ensure that a comprehensive backup strategy is created and that retention rules are being applied as expected.
Full Backups
A full backup file contains all of the data stored in the selected source partitions when creating disk images, and all of the specified files when creating a file and folder backup. This backup type has no dependencies and must always be created before subsequent differential and incremental backups can be performed. These are the largest type of backup since they contain all the data from the specified source partitions or files, and will take the longest to create.
These backups have the advantage that they are fully independent, meaning they can be deleted and moved without affecting later backups.
Differential Backups
A differential backup file contains all the data that has changed from the source partitions when creating a disk image, or files that have changed when creating a file and folder backup, since the full backup was created. Initially, this will create a smaller file than a full backup and will also be faster to create. However, as more time elapses since the full backup was created, these will increase in size and the amount of time they take to create, as the number of changes since the full backup increases.
These have the advantage of only ever needing the differential backup file that will be restored and the full backup file that it is appended to, to be able to restore, with intermediate files not being needed.
Incremental Backup
An incremental backup contains all the changes that have occurred to the source partition since the last backup of any type was created. These are the smallest size backup files and the fastest to create.
To restore an incremental backup, all previous backups in the set must be available. If 'Inc 3' in the example above is deleted, inc 4, 5, and 6 also would not be able to be restored.
Understanding Schedule Templates
Combinations of these backup types can be defined in the schedule to create more flexible backup schedules; this also enables the benefits of each backup type while minimizing the negatives. Macrium Reflect LTSC includes a set of industry-standard schedule templates.
The examples below provide a visual for the backups that will be performed for each schedule template over an example 30-day period.
Grandfather, Father, Son
The example below shows a Grandfather, Father, Son schedule which makes use of full, differential, and incremental backups:
