To facilitate your use of O&O DiskImage, we explain selected terms in the following chapters that you will encounter while working with the program:
Drive/Partition A drive is a specifically designated area of a hard disk. Multiple drives can exist on a single hard disk. In this context, the term "drive" refers to both partitions and logical drives in extended partitions and volumes.
For clearer organization, drives are often divided as follows:
- Drive C: for the operating system and application programs
- Drive D: for documents such as photos, Office documents, music, etc.
This division facilitates the separate backup of data and system with O&O DiskImage.
Backup A backup creates an “image” of your drives, containing all the information of the original. This image is stored in a special, compressed file format that requires less storage space than the original. The more regularly you perform backups, the better protected you are from data loss. If data on your original drive is damaged or lost, you can restore the last backup with just a few clicks, reconstructing the state of the drive at the time of the backup.
Difference between file backup and drive backup A file backup focuses on saving files as a data set and stores only file information in the OBK format (.obk). In contrast, a drive backup saves either occupied or all sectors of a drive, including the file system and all files and folders. This method stores the data in the OMG format (.omg).
Backup file A backup consists of one or more files (*.omg). If the storage space of a medium is insufficient, backups can be distributed across multiple media and saved in new backup files on each. It is important to number the media (e.g., CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays) to facilitate later restoration or use as the basis for incremental backups.
File formats O&O DiskImage creates and processes various file formats:
OMG: For backing up entire systems or individual drives.
OBK: For file backups.
VHD: For virtual machines, allows the integration of drives from backups.
VHDX: Offers increased storage capacity up to 64 TB and protection against file corruption, compared to 2 TB for VHD.
Full backup A full backup re-saves all selected data and stores it in a directory on the target medium. This method is thorough as it creates a complete copy of the data.
Differential and incremental backups Following a full backup, changes can either be saved by differential backups, which only store differences from the last full backup, or by incremental backups, which only capture changes since the last backup. These methods are space and time-efficient.
Base backup A base backup serves as a reference point for subsequent differential or incremental backups. A differential backup requires a previous full backup, while incremental backups typically use the last backup as the base.
These expanded explanations are designed to help you better understand the concepts and processes around data backup with O&O DiskImage and to use them effectively.