I bring that point up because having a sound backup system in place is a vital part of administering a network. If an email server in your network right now, would you have a backup to restore as much data as possible? Take it from me -- you better.

It's rare to find a network that has no backup system in place, but whether that system is current is often another matter. Personally, I've visited networks where they had a tape drive right there in the server room, with tapes right next to it, and no system in place. Everyone thought someone else was supposed to be handling it (or hoped someone else was), the tapes had no dates, etc. That's exactly where you and I do not want to be.

Part of developing a data backup strategy is deciding how often to run backups, and what kind of backups to run. It's not always feasible to back up all data on every single server every single night. Let's look at the different backup types and exactly what gets backed up when they're run.

Files have an archive bit that indicates whether the file has been changed since the last

I bring that point up because having a sound backup system in place is a vital part of administering a network. If an email server in your network right now, would you have a backup to restore as much data as possible? Take it from me -- you better.

It's rare to find a network that has no backup system in place, but whether that system is current is often another matter. Personally, I've visited networks where they had a tape drive right there in the server room, with tapes right next to it, and no system in place. Everyone thought someone else was supposed to be handling it (or hoped someone else was), the tapes had no dates, etc. That's exactly where you and I do not want to be.

Part of developing a data backup strategy is deciding how often to run backups, and what kind of backups to run. It's not always feasible to back up all data on every single server every single night. Let's look at the different backup types and exactly what gets backed up when they're run.

Files have an archive bit that indicates whether the file has been changed since the last

It's rare to find a network that has no backup system in place, but whether that system is current is often another matter. Personally, I've visited networks where they had a tape drive right there in the server room, with tapes right next to it, and no system in place. Everyone thought someone else was supposed to be handling it (or hoped someone else was), the tapes had no dates, etc. That's exactly where you and I do not want to be.

Part of developing a data backup strategy is deciding how often to run backups, and what kind of backups to run. It's not always feasible to back up all data on every single server every single night. Let's look at the different backup types and exactly what gets backed up when they're run.

Files have an archive bit that indicates whether the file has been changed since the last

Part of developing a data backup strategy is deciding how often to run backups, and what kind of backups to run. It's not always feasible to back up all data on every single server every single night. Let's look at the different backup types and exactly what gets backed up when they're run.

Files have an archive bit that indicates whether the file has been changed since the last

Files have an archive bit that indicates whether the file has been changed since the last backup ran. When a file is backed up, this bit is set to "off". When a new file is created or an old file's contents are altered, this bit is set to "on". Keep this archive bit in mind during the following discussion.

A full backup is just what it sounds like. All files are backed up, regardless of the archive bit setting. That's the easy one. Watch these next two. :) The difference is subtle, but significant.

An incremental backup backs up all files created or changed since the last backup of any kind. Every single file with the archive bit set to "on" is backed up.

A differential backup backs up everything that is different -- that is, all files created or changed -- since the last full backup only.

Now you may be thinking, "What in the heck do we need both of those for? What's the real difference?" Believe it or not, this wasn't developed just to make your Network+ exam harder. It just seems that way!

Your choice of backups depends largely on the amount of time you have to run your backups and how much data will have to be stored. Many network administrators choose to run full backups only on weekends and either incremental or differential backups during the week.

One network I wa