On 21/10/14 16:11, Chris Green wrote:
[SNIP]
I much prefer snapshots as they seem to me much safer and more robust.
So... Why ask about incrementals in the subject of the OP if you've already decided to use snapshots only?
Because, to my mind and many others, incremental can mean differential or snapshot! :-)
Er. No!
A snapshot is exactly that, it is a copy of a state at an exact moment in time, with no references to the past or future.
Incremental means - well, by increments. In the case of backups, it means that only those changes since the last backup are saved rather than the whole file. Each of those changes is by its nature incremental, so of course, it means rebuilding, using those increments, from the original outwards, in the correct order.
They simply are not the same. If you ask for incremental backups, that's what you'll get, not some kind of random definition of a snapshot, massaged to become a differential. Which is what exactly in that context? Seriously? Those are rhetorical questions, BTW. I realise they don't have an answer. Not sensible ones anyway.
Sigh...