If you are wondering how online backup is now able to do a full backup nightly when in the past this wasn't possible, read on.

Not too long ago, most online backups were used to only backup a subset of your total data, or only important corporate financial data and other small data sets. This was because back in those days technologies like data compression and deduplication were just not as good or they just did not exist.

Now-a-days most online backups will backup only the delta, what has already been backed up does not get backed up again. This considerably reduces the size of data to be backed up, combine this with powerful compression and you can get a full backup on a nightly basis in almost any case.

So once the initial seed is done (your initial backup has completed) from that point onwards, you are only backing up delta which takes less time and space.

There are obvious advantages to having backups online; You don't need to worry about losing backup media, you don't have to change media, you can restore to another server half way around the country or the world, there is no chance of backup tapes being lost, the list goes on and on. With storage costs getting lower and lower, online backup doesn't even have to break the bank, this holds true for all sizes of business.