Seagate ST905003BPA1E1-RK BlackArmor PS User Guide - Page 14
General information, 3.1 The difference between file archives and disk/partition images - chain
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Chapter 3. General information 3.1 The difference between file archives and disk/partition images A backup archive is a file or a group of files (also called "backups" in this guide), that contains a copy of selected file/folder data or a copy of all information stored on selected Seagate BlackArmor NAS or Seagate\Maxtor DAS. When you back up files and folders, only the data, along with the folder tree, is compressed and stored. Backing up disks and partitions is performed in a different way: Seagate BlackArmor Backup stores a sector-by-sector snapshot of the disk, which includes the operating system, registry, drivers, software applications and data files, as well as system areas hidden from the user. This procedure is called "creating a disk image," and the resulting backup archive is often called a disk/partition image. By default, Seagate BlackArmor Backup stores only those hard disk parts that contain data (for supported file systems). Further, it does not back up swap file information (pagefile.sys under Windows XP/Vista) and hiberfil.sys (a file that keeps RAM contents when the computer goes into hibernation). This reduces image size and speeds up image creation and restoration. However, you might use the Create an image using the sector-by-sector approach option that lets you include all of the sectors of a hard disk in an image. A partition image includes all files and folders. This includes all attributes (including hidden and system files), boot record, and FAT (file allocation table); as well as files in the root directory and the zero track of the hard disk with master boot record (MBR). A disk image includes images of all disk partitions as well as the zero track with master boot record (MBR). By default, files in all Seagate BlackArmor Backup archives have a ".tib" extension. Do not change this file extension. It is important to note that you can restore files and folders not only from file archives, but from disk/partition images too. To do so, mount the image as a virtual disk (see Chapter 12. Exploring archives and mounting images) or start the image restoration and select Restore specified files or folders. 3.2 Full, incremental and differential backups Seagate BlackArmor Backup can create full, incremental and differential backups. A full backup contains all data at the moment of backup creation. It forms a base for further incremental or differential backup or is used as a standalone archive. A full backup has the shortest restore time compared to incremental or differential ones. An incremental backup file only contains data changed since the last backup of any type (full, incremental, or differential one). Therefore, it is smaller and takes less time to create, but as it doesn't contain all data; all the previous backups and the initial full backup are required for restoration. Unlike an incremental backup, when every backup procedure creates the next file in a "chain", a differential backup creates an independent file, containing all changes since the 14 Copyright (c) 2000-2009 Acronis. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2009 Seagate Technology LLC. All Rights Reserved.