When planning a backup strategy, one of the most common decisions IT teams face is whether to use incremental or differential backups. Both methods build on a full backup, but they differ in how they store subsequent changes.

What Is Incremental Backup?

An incremental backup copies only the data that has changed since the last backup of any kind, whether full or incremental. This produces smaller, faster backups but makes recovery more complex, as the restore process must apply the full backup plus every incremental in sequence.

What Is Differential Backup?

A differential backup copies all data changed since the last full backup. Each differential job grows larger as time passes since the last full, but recovery is simpler: apply the full backup and the latest differential only.

Key Comparison

Incremental backups are faster to create and consume less storage per job. Differential backups are faster to restore and simpler to manage. Organizations with strict RTO requirements often prefer differential backups for critical workloads, accepting the higher storage cost in exchange for simplified recovery.

The right choice depends on your RTO requirements, available storage, and backup window constraints. For deeper analysis of incremental vs differential backup strategies and how they interact with full backup scheduling, StoneFly’s resource library covers each approach in detail.