Selective Backup

What Does Selective Backup Mean?

Selective backup is a type of data backup process in which only user-specified data, files and folders are backed up. It enables short listing only selected files in a backup process rather than backing up the whole folder, disk or system.

Selective backup is also known as partial backup.

Techopedia Explains Selective Backup

Selective backup primarily helps the data owner or system administrator to back up a select group of files or folders. Typically, selective backup is performed when only important/critical files are backed up or the backup storage device has less capacity than what's required to accommodate a full backup. The user manually selects the desired data in the backup software before initiating the backup process.

Incremental backup is similar to selective backup, in which only the data and files that are changed since the last backup are backed up.