Advantages and Disadvantages of Incremental Backup [Comprehensive Review for 2024]

What is incremental backup?

Incremental backups provide a faster way to back up your data. An incremental backup backs up only the data that has changed since the last backup.

Unlike a full backup, which always copies all your files when you create a backup, an incremental backup only records changes since the last backup of any type. That's why it's called incremental: each backup is an increment on top of the last one. Plus, incremental backups can back up files, folders, and even external hard drives.

Incremental backup is one of the three types of backup types. There are several types of incremental backups: multi-level incremental, reverse incremental, forever incremental, block-level incremental, byte-level incremental, and synthetic full backup.

The Advantages of Incremental Backup

Backups help prevent irreparable loss or damage to computer systems and content. Of the three types – full, differential, and incremental – the latter is the most common. There are several reasons why:

• Incremental backups result in smaller file sizes. This is because only new or modified files are backed up. Consequently, each subsequent backup will be smaller in size, saving you a significant amount of storage space.
• Creation time for incremental backups is less. This is because you're only copying new or altered files. As a result, the incremental backup process completes more quickly than a full backup.
• Less data is transferred when using incremental backups. If you're backing up your data to an online service, incremental backups utilize less bandwidth since they involve transferring smaller amounts of data.

The disadvantage of incremental backup

Incremental backups offer greater flexibility for data backup. However, as they say, “there are two sides to every coin.” Hence, incremental backups are not as feature-packed as you would want them to be. Thus, there are a few things to consider when doing an incremental backup:

• A full recovery requires the first full backup plus all incremental backups since, which can take longer.
• If you want to restore the latest version of a single file, you have to find the incremental backup that contains it.
• All incremental backups should be restored in a specific order. If any prior incremental backup of a given file fails, the entire file will be unrecoverable.

Conclusions

With the extensive use of computers for communication and work, it is crucial to back up valuable data safely to prevent virus attacks, such as the WannaCry ransomware, or in case of a blue screen of death (BSoD) issue.

Among the three backup types, incremental backups are the most advantageous method. This is because they ensure data reliability and accessibility, save significant storage space, consume less bandwidth, and complete faster compared to full backups. However, their drawbacks, such as slower recovery speed and dependency on the integrity of increments, can be mitigated by conducting regular full backups and implementing appropriate retention policies for your backups.

This article provides a comprehensive insight into incremental backups and their pros and cons. Each backup method has its peculiarities, and if you feel the need to employ different methods to back up your data, specialized backup software can come in handy.