A differential backup is used for backing up files on a file system that have changed since the last backup had taken place. What this means is that the differential backup will only backup files that have been modified, and will keep the other files as is.

Other types of backups include incremental backups and full backups.  However, which type of backup you choose mostly depends on your situation. Sometimes a incremental backup may make more sense. A differential backup is sort of the middle ground between incremental and a full backup.

Incremental backups are quite fast in comparison with differential backups. Likewise, a differential backup is much faster than a full backup as well. In terms of storage space, incremental is also less than what differential backups take in terms of data storage, and differential backups take up less space than what a full backup does.

As you can see, incremental backups generally are lighter and deal with the least amount of data, whereas full backups essentially take all data and are the heaviest in terms of storage space and time involved. Differential backups are somewhat of the middleman.

A differential backup also takes less time to restore than a incremental backup, but takes more time to restore than what a full backup does. An example of how this works is as follows: If you were to take a full backup on a Monday and differential backup every day, and the system crashed on Friday, then you would only need to restore the full data backup from Monday, and restore the differential backup from Thursday. It’s always a good idea to perform differential backups every day, especially in production system environments. Failing to do so can result in some serious problems in terms of data information and even information integrity.

Incremental backups are a bit different in that they take up the longest time to restore and the most tapes needed. This type of restoration method is only advised if the environment you are working in has an extremely limited storage situation. Otherwise, the full backup weekly and daily backup of differential methods is a much better plan overall. If you performed a full system backup on Monday, and incremental backups nightly, and the system crashed on Friday, then you’d need to restore the full backup of Monday plus the incremental backups from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. As you can see, this option isn’t quite as good as the differential option.

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