How does Disc based backup work?
Many businesses choose to utilise disc based backup to maintain copies of company data. Disc backup can occur onsite within a WAN network, or offsite within a cloud solution. In addition, many businesses choose to add a tape drive as an extra level of redundancy. Disc backup enables both a quick backup window and recovery.
Disc backup generally occurs through a processes of image replication. An image of important files is sent between disc arrays. Following an initial full backup of an entire data set, subsequent changes are copied. This processes of copying changes rather than full backups minimises network and disc capacity complications.
The two methods of backing up data changes are:
Differential backups: The difference between the last full backup and most recent one. After an image is taken, the difference between the current state and the last full backup is sent between your production and backup environment.
Incremental backups: Are similar to differential backups however, instead being the difference to the last full backup, they are the difference from the last incremental backup. Incremental backups utilise less disk space than differential backups, however the downside is that you require both the original full backup and each of the incremental backups taken to restore your system.
Disc based backup has a number of benefits over traditional tape based backup including:
| Tape Backup | Disc based backup | |
| Ease of Data Restoration | Time consuming and difficult to restore data. | Files can easily be restored over a network connection. |
| Maintenance and Management | Requires technicians to design, manage and maintain tape backup processes and recover data. | Management of backups takes less time and can be outsourced to an experienced IT consultant. |
| Reliability | High mechanical and write failures. | Less mechanical parts and less movement of media leads to improved reliability. |
| Scalability | Limited to capacity of tape drive and media type | High scalability, disks can easily be added to storage arrays. |
| Security | Risk of theft when moving tapes between premise | Risk of hacking when maintained on a network connection. |
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