File based Disaster Recovery Backup with Stratesave has several advantages over imaged based backups:
1. Differential backups are possible and easily defined and have a clear implementation.
For every file it will be checked if it is contained in a previous full backup, keeping daily
differential backups small. Differential backups can also be done to network server.
Disaster recovery will restore to the state of last differential backup.
Differential backups with image backups have a less clear implementation based on disk blocks.
Swap files can be skipped in file based backups, saving even more backup space and time.
2. File based System State backups are done in full cooperation with Windows with defined API.
Windows knows what is going on and can provide correct information for all System State information like Registry etc.
3. File based Disaster Recovery supports changed hardware better than image based backup Software.
This is done by leaving out certain system defined files and registry keys during backup and restore
(FilesNotToBackup, KeysNotToRestore, VSS excluded files). The first boot after disaster recovery will automatically
recreate these files, which will adjust themselves to the new hardware.
4. File access time is not updated during file backup with snapshot backups. The file information of backed up files remains unchanged.
5. Restoring single files from a backup can sometimes also be done from image based backups, but this is much easier
from file based backup.
