Features
There are two different types of backup supported: File backup and system image. File backups are saved to ZIP files. Two types of file backup are supported: The first type, normal backup, stores everything selected for backup. The second type, incremental backup stores only files that are changed after a previous backup. However, unlike the file backup and NTBackup, in which data are backed up file by file, system image is a disk image of the backed up system saved block by block in a VHD file. Block-based backup is more efficient at performing subsequent differential backups, as only the blocks that have changed need to be backed up.
During a backup, Windows uses Volume Shadow Copy Service to ensure that files are not changed while they are being backed up. VSS ensures both file system level consistency as well as application-level consistency for applications registered as VSS writers. Newer backup media such as CD, DVD and Blu-ray discs are supported in Backup and Restore.
Windows Backup service is the Windows service responsible for backup and restore operation. The Backup and Restore application, however, is not the only way of interfacing with this service: The Wbadmin command-line utility may also be used.
The entire disk or individual files can be restored through the utility. In addition, the VHD file can be attached (mounted) as a separate disk. Regardless of latest backup being incremental or full, the attached disk will reflect the state of the disk at the latest backup, with the previous versions feature exposing older backup sets.
Read more about this topic: Backup And Restore
Famous quotes containing the word features:
“These, then, will be some of the features of democracy ... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, particolored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times—the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie—seem attractive by comparison.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)