What is a backup?

A backup, or the process of backing up, refers to the making of copies of data so that these additional copies may be used to recover or restore the original data after a data loss.

Backups are useful for a number of reasons including:

Disaster Recovery - The process of restoring a computer system back to a known good state prior to a disaster.

Accidental Deletion - The process of restoring small numbers of files that have been accidently deleted.