Which backup method creates a new full backup without reading data from the production server, by combining an existing full backup with the intervening incremental backups, so that the resulting file can be restored almost as quickly as a native full backup while keeping the nightly backup window short?
A synthetic full backup is built entirely inside the backup repository: the software starts with the last active full backup and merges all subsequent incremental backups to synthesize a new, fully self-contained restore point. Because no data is pulled from the protected server, the process minimizes network bandwidth and backup-window length but still yields a single-step restore comparable to a traditional full backup. A differential backup recopies every block changed since the last full, so it steadily grows larger and still must traverse the source host. An incremental backup copies only the blocks changed since the previous backup, giving the smallest backup window, but recovery requires the original full plus each incremental in order, which lengthens restore time. A snapshot is merely a point-in-time view of a volume on the production system and is not a consolidated, portable backup suitable for fast bare-metal restoration or off-site disaster recovery.