What is a backup?

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We’ve added a new article to our Knowledgebase, that explains a very fundamental question, what is a backup. You can read the article here: What is a backup?

What is a backup? A backup is a procedure you do when you make a copy of your data to be protected in case you lose the original data. You can use the backup copy to get your data back if something goes wrong. For example, if your computer crashes or you accidentally delete a file, you can use your backup to get your data back.

The backup copy can be used to restore your files if something goes wrong. You can back up your data to an external hard drive, a USB flash drive, or in the cloud. There are several main types of backups you can use:

  • Full backups. Use this to back-up your entire data every time the backup runs.
  • Incremental backups. Use this to back-up only new and modified files since the last full/differential/mirror backup.
  • Differential backups. Use this to back-up only new and modified files since the last full backup.
  • Mirror backups. Use this to back-up source files in the original format, without any compression.

As a recommendation, incremental backups are more popular as those only copy new or changed data since the last full backup.

As far as frequency, you should create regular backups of your important data depending on how often that data changes.

There are many different ways to back up data. You can back-up to an external hard drive, a USB flash drive, or even online cloud storage services such as Google Drive or Microsoft Azure. What’s important is to choose a backup destination that works for you and that you will actually use.

With Backup4all you get a fully featured backup software that can back-up to multiple destinations, from multiple sources and using a backup type that suits your needs.

This is a summary of the full article we’ve recently updated. For a detailed explanation on what is a backup, you have to read the full article in our Knowledgebase: What is a backup?