Backup strategies Whether you need to save all files on a volume, all files in a directory tree, or a group of files from one or more locations, BACKUP Manager offers two strategies for backing up your files: · Snapshot backup strategy - each time you backup your files, all of the files are placed in a save set, and the new save set supersedes any previously created save set for the same directories. · Incremental backup strategy - first you create a baseline save set that contains of all your files, then during subsequent backups you create incremental save sets to save files that have been added or changed. Together the baseline plus all of the incremental save sets represent the current state of your directories. To implement the snapshot backup strategy simply use the Snapshot backup operation from the "Save Volume ..." or the "Save Selected Files ..." submenu each time you backup your files. To implement the incremental backup strategy, first use the Baseline backup operation from the "Save Volume ..." or the "Save Selected Files ..." submenu. Then on subsequent backups choose the Incremental backup operation to save the files that are new or have been changed since the last baseline or incremental backup was performed. When you choose a backup strategy, you determine what you want to back up and how often you want to do it. Your backup strategy depends on the following factors: · The number and size of disks or tapes you can devote to backups · The importance of the data · How often the data changes For example, if you have a standalone workstation in a "mission- critical" environment and many files are updated each day, you might want to perform a nightly snapshot backup of all of your files. However, if you modify only a few files during the course of your work day (or week), a daily (or weekly) incremental backup to capture the changes might be a more efficient method, because it takes less time to perform an incremental backup. With either strategy all of your files are protected, but it usually takes longer to restore files using the incremental method because more save sets are processed. With either strategy, if unexpected data loss occurs (for example, a disk is damaged or you accidently delete one or more files) you have the option of restoring all saved files, or selecting which files to restore. If you have been performing snapshot backups, then you use the most recent save set. However, if you have a combination of baseline and incremental backup save sets, restore files from the baseline saveset first, then restore files from the incremental save sets next. Note that restoring incremental backups in reverse chronological order is more efficient that proceeding in chronological order. For more information, see "Recovering data with multiple backup strategies" in the "Tasks ..." help topic.