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What is data
backup purpose
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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. |
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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.
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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. |
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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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