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What is data backup purpose
| Backup is the process of creating security copies of the data to protect against unexpected data loss (device failure, unwanted modifications), on demand (i.e. before committing significant changes to the system, or to user's files) or, more often, as scheduled task on a regular basis, commonly during night hours or anytime the system is not being actively used, in order to reduce the impact of the operation on performances. | 
| Backup vs redundancy
While live copies of the data (as mirroring or some RAID configutarions providing data redundancy, i.e. RAID5), guarantee ability to promptly recover from som cases of data loss (i.e. a faulty disk drive) in some configurations even without interrupting the work, only a backup copy allows to protect data against unintentional deletion (even secure data deletion) or undetected corruption, providing the ability to restore previous saved copies of the data.
Complete and incremental backup types
Backup task can be complete, with each backup contain the copy of the entire data at a given moment, or incremental, with each subsequent backup in the set containing only data modified from the moment of previous backup-
Backup content can be journaled, with the ability of tracking the changes durng time for each file in the backup set - modern filesystems also supports journaling, in order to transparently fix filesystem inconsistencies due to crash or system malfunctions.
Backup software
Specific backup applications (as Areca Backup, Bacula, Cobian Backup , Symantec Backup Exec, Norton Ghost, etc), may feature abilities out of the scope of PeaZip project, which is more oriented to general purpose archiving and file management, i.e. differential / incremental backup which is the process of saving only a copy of the data actually changed since the last backup task, or low level disk copy routines to physically clone the hard disk - more common in software specifically meant for cloning disk images (as Acronis True Image, Nero, PowerIso, Winimage, Apple Disk Copy).
Backup files with PeaZip, pros and cons
PeaZip has different advantages due to its nature of multi purpose software, featuring many functions useful for backup operations.
In example, one of the areas PeaZip is focused in is bridging the gap between scripting and GUI application, the program being able to save file compression operations from GUI to script files.
How to create a backup script with PeaZip In this way the definition of a backup task can be easily exported as a command line and used in any system scheduler, or in third party programs and scripts: Add > Console > Save job definition creates a plain text file containing the job definition, saved by default in a "Scripts" subfolder in PeaZip's configuration path, which is unique for each user.
Schedule to run a backup script
In the same way it can be saved and scheduled the definition of ìextraction tasks, i.e. in order to restore / recover backup files and folders programmatically, or even a file conversion operation in order to change the backup file format to make it readable on different systems if needed.
Jurnaled backup with ZPAQ
PeaZip also supports the creation and extraction of ZPAQ archives, an Open Source file fomat natively supporting journaling and incremental archiving by design, which allows to save and restore multiple versions of files added incrementally to same backup archive.
Read more on Wikipedia page about data backup
PeaZip, Open Source archive mananger utility, can backup files to multiple archive format, and is especially suited to save files to Open Source standard formats as 7Z, TAR, and ZIP.
Encrypt backup files
PeaZip also features strong encryption protocols, (i.e. WinZip AES256 AE encryption for ZIP files; 7-Zip AES256 encryption for 7Z files; AES, Twofish and Serpent for ARC files), including optional encryption of TOC (table of content, list of contained files and folders) of the archive in order to protect and keep private the content of the backup archive, including file and directories names, until the correct password is provided.
| Two factor authentication is optionally supported for all archive format using encryption; this improves the security of the encryption using a key file along the password. |
| Decrypting the archive file will need, if two factor authentication is used, both to know the password and to have the key file.
PeaZip also comes with an encrypted password manager to help safely managing multiple passwords.
Chose compression for backup files
Backup usually involves copying large quantities of files, making in some cases use of strong compression algorithms impractical: for those cases PeaZip supports fast compression algorithms, or even file storing without compression, but it also provides state of art strong compression algorithms when this need does not apply, in order to save most disk space it is possible (to reduce the cost of storing more copies if the backup over the time), or to reduce the size of the output in order to reduce bandwidth usage when backup is not stored locally (i.e. on SAN / NAS, cloud).
Fore instance, backup to 7Z format (as well as ZPAQ) allows excellent compression ratio, while backup in TAR format with fast Brotli or Zstandard compression allows to easily handle large amount of backup data per amount of time.
How to span backup files
PeaZip also allow to split the output file in volumes of a given size (file spanning), so each part can be stored in smaller back up units if needed.
Update backup files
As general purpose file archiver application, PeaZip can also easily add / remove data from existing archive, and update date inside existing archives - policy can be set to replace only older data (standard update command), freshen archive only adding new version of files already featured in the archive, or sync with disk keeping only the archive content matching with current live data.
Synopsis: How to use free backup software. How to backup software works. How to save and schedule security copy and restore data. How to use PeaZip as free, Open Source utility to compress, span and encrypt saved files and folders.
Topics: how do backup software works, how to backup files and folders, backup encyption and compression
PeaZip > FAQ > Free backup and restore software, how to use
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