Can incremental/ differential backups do this?

Dan, both incremental and differential backups reflect the changes being made on your computer but work in different ways.

Incremental backups always rely on & require all elements of the backup version chain involved, i.e. the initial Full backup and all subsequent Incremental backup files.

If you recover your system from an Incremental backup version chain, then you will recover to the actual status of the system as it was when the selected incremental backup file was created, including all changes for additions, changes and deletions of content.

Differential backups rely on & require only the initial Full backup and any one of the subsequent Differential backup files.

If you recover your system from a Differential backup version chain, then it will be recovered to the status as it was when the selected differential backup file was created.

With an incremental backup version chain, you can have as many recovery points to choose to recover from as you have files in the chain.

With a differential backup chain, you have just 2 recovery points for each combination of full and differential files, and differential files tend to grow in size as more changes occur.

In a nutshell to Steve's reply... the answer is yes.  As he mentioned, though, it all depends on the point in time your backup was taken and how many backup points you have to recover from.  If you took a daily incremental backup, or a daily differential backup, you could restore your entire system to exactly that state when the backup was taken.  So if you had a backup of yesterday with all the files, you could restore to that point, or if you had a backup from earlier today (taken after all those files were deleted) you could restore it like that.  The difference (as Steve mentioned) is simply how the backup types differ in process.  The main thing... take backups often, retain several iterations of them and you will have different recovery options to choose from as a result.

@Steve Smith

@Bobbo_3C0X1

Thanks to both for replying.

>In a nutshell to Steve's reply... the answer is yes.

Thanks for starting your answer like that. For those of us who are not smarter than 5th graders we need the very, very dumbed down answer : )

Let me try and pose my question like this and the simplest answer in my case anyway is the easiest to understand.

1. I have a folder that has 6 nested folders in it. I do a "folders and files" backup of that folder today on to an external drive.

2. During the course of the next two weeks I add and delete files to those 6 nested folders.

3. Two more weeks pass by and I now do a differential backup of that folder that contains the 6 nested folders. So now I have the original "folders and files" backup image made two weeks ago and the differential backup image i just made.

4. 10 minutes go by and for whatever reason the original folder and the 6 nested folders are corrupted and I need to restore them.

5. As i mentioned in my original post when I did my quick read of "backups" it seemed that differential and incremental talked mostly about "additions" and not "deletions" sooooo now I do a restore and my original question was I wanted to make sure that when I restore the original image followed by the ONE differential backup that I have that my restored version will reflect the additions AS WELL as the deletions I have made in the intervening 2 weeks and from what I gather the answer is yes. Do I have that right. And Ditto if I had done all of this with a DISK IMAGE backup of the C drive ie. one original disk image backup and one differential backup when I go to restore the C drive image coupled with the C drive differential backup my restored C drive will reflect any additions AND deletions that I have made. Have I got that right as well?

Thanks to both again.

Dan,

Yes.  Look at it this way.  Each backup is a recovery "point in time", a snapshot of the data as it is in the folder then.  When you recover the entire folder, it would look exactly like it does in the backup.

Alternatively, you can navigate the data in a snapshot and just copy/paste from what's in there as well.

So you have the option to restore as it was, or pick and choose out of it and recover just what you want/need.

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FYI... when I recover file/folders, I always recover to a different location (like a separate hard drive).  Just to ensure it has exactly what I expect.  I then move that to the other location (if replacing data that should reside elsewhere).  Not a requirement, but may help to ensure you're recovering exactly what you expect to.

@Bobbo_3C0X1

Thanks for the quick reply.

>Yes.

Thanks : )

>FYI... when I recover file/folders, I always recover to a different location (like a separate hard drive).  Just to ensure it has exactly what I expect.

Copy that. Good to know that works like that since that was always going to be my intention all along. I have been using various versions of TI for some years now and twice a HDD platter crapped out on me and I was able to restore using the disk image. I do not schedule backups so sometimes my backups are older than I would like but that's on me.

Dan,

You're welcome.  You should be in good shape as long as your backups contain the data you need. I'm a big fan of offline (manually scheduled) backups too! 

I've been really happy with the automated backups too though.  Kind of nice having the option to revert to either if/when the the need comes up.