What is the Full Backup?
The Full Backup is the starting point for all backup jobs and contains all the data in the folders and files that are selected to be backed up. Because the Full Backup stores all files and folders, frequent backups will result in faster and simpler restore operations. Remember that when you choose other backup types, restore jobs may take longer.
Description of the Full Backup Type
It would be ideal to make full backups all the time because they are the most extensive and are self-contained. However, the amount of time it takes to run full backups often prevents us from using this backup type. Full backups are often restricted to a weekly or monthly schedule. However, the increasing speed and capacity of backup media are making it more feasible to perform these full backups overnight.
Full backups, if you have the time to perform them, offer the best solution for data protection. In effect, a single backup is sufficient to completely restore all backed-up files.
Advantages
- The fastest restore time
Disadvantages
- The slowest backup time
- The storage space requirements are the highest (compared to incremental or differential backups)
The Full Backup Type in Backup4all
When making full backups, storage space can become an issue. In Backup4all you have two options for saving storage space. To reduce the overall backup size, you can either limit the number of file versions to be stored or limit the number of backups. The output of the Full Backup is a compressed zip file container. You can select the zip compression ratio from the Compression page in Backup Properties. Backup4all can also encrypt the backup archives. This gives you the option to protect your backed up data from being stolen and used.