What Does Synthetic Backup Mean?
A synthetic backup is the process of utilizing the full backup of a file, and then modifying that file with one or more incremental backups. The first incremental backup is only created from changed data since the full backup; later incremental backups consist only of changed data from the last full backup. It is called a synthetic backup because it was not created from original data, but instead was created from two or more files merged, or synthesized, by the backup application.
