iSACA Cybersecurity Fundamentals Certification Practice Exam

Which backup method would be the slowest to recover data from?

1. Incremental backup

2. Differential backup

3. Full backup

4. All are equally slow

The correct answer is: Incremental backup

The incremental backup method is recognized for being the slowest to recover data from because it relies on the restoration of multiple backups to fully restore the system or data. When performing incremental backups, only the data that has changed since the last backup (be it incremental or full) is saved. Therefore, to restore the most recent state of the data, the recovery process must start from the last full backup and then sequentially apply each incremental backup afterward. For instance, if there have been several incremental backups taken since the last full backup, the process involves restoring the full backup first, followed by each incremental backup in order. This can be time-consuming, especially as the number of incremental backups increases. In contrast, recovering from a differential backup is typically faster since it includes all changes made since the last full backup, requiring only two backup sets: the last full backup and the most recent differential backup. A full backup, while initially taking longer to create, contains all data in one backup set, allowing for a straightforward and efficient recovery process. Therefore, due to the nature of restoring multiple incremental backups, this method results in slower recovery times compared to the other backup types.