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Should I create a whole hard drive backup or an incremental part backup for my data?

caution

You cannot fully backup an encrypted drive. You must start with an incremental backup for your drive.

Example: Suppose you want to back up your local machine, and you inquire how much space you need to perform the backup. You might want to compress your data, but the backup size is generally the same after compression.

The current state of your drive is that you have already done backups in the past.

As a solution to save space, you would be better off using incremental backups for your local machine.

However, incremental backups work until a certain point. Every few months, you should have a complete backup of your drives at an infrastructural level.

tip
  • Incremental backups (snapshots) are linked to the full backups (checkpoints).
  • To learn more about incremental and full backup differences, navigate to Snapshot VS Checkpoint question.