What Is Backup and Disaster Recovery?

Learn how backup and disaster recovery protect your business, the difference between RPO and RTO, and how to choose the right deployment model.

Aug 03, 2026

Backup and disaster recovery are two connected practices that protect your data and your ability to operate after something goes wrong. Backup is the act of copying data so it can be restored if the original is lost. Disaster recovery is the broader plan for getting systems, applications, and operations running again after a serious disruption. 

Together, they answer two questions: can you get your data back, and can you keep the business running while you do? The sections below explain how this works and the decisions it involves.



What’s the Difference Between Backup and Disaster Recovery?

The terms are often used together, but they cover different ground. A backup is a copy of your data. If a file is deleted, a server fails, or ransomware encrypts your records, you restore from that copy. Backup is about the data itself.

Disaster recovery is about returning to working operations after a major event. It covers the data, but also the servers, applications, network settings, and the order in which everything must come back online. A business can hold complete, tested backups and still sit offline for days if it has no plan for rebuilding the systems around that data.

The practical point is this: backup is one component of disaster recovery, not a substitute for it. You need both.



Key Backup and Disaster Recovery Concepts Decision-Makers Should Understand

Building backup and disaster recovery starts with decisions, not with technology. The first step is to identify which data and systems matter most, and what it would cost the business if each were unavailable or lost. That assessment sets your priorities: which systems must come back first, and which can wait.

From there you set measurable targets for data loss and downtime, choose how and where backups are stored, and document the recovery process so it can be followed under pressure. The plan is then tested on a schedule, because a backup that has never been restored is an assumption, not a safeguard. Three concepts sit underneath these decisions.

What Is RPO?

RPO, or recovery point objective, is the maximum amount of data you can afford to lose, measured in time. It marks the gap between your last usable backup and the moment a failure hits. If you back up once a day and a server fails just before the next backup, you could lose almost a full day of work. That tolerance, stated as a length of time, is your RPO.

RPO drives how often you back up. A one-hour RPO means a backup no older than an hour must always exist, which requires frequent copies. For the business, RPO is a direct question about recent work: how many hours of transactions, orders, or records can you re-enter or lose without serious harm. Tighter targets cost more, so the answer differs by system.

What Is RTO?

RTO, or recovery time objective, is the maximum amount of downtime you can accept before systems are restored, measured forward from the moment of failure. If your RTO for a system is four hours, recovery must bring it back within four hours of going down.

Where RPO measures lost data, RTO measures lost time. The two are independent. You could lose only five minutes of data but still take a day to get systems running again, which is a strong RPO paired with a weak RTO. RTO drives your recovery method: meeting a short target may require standby systems ready to take over, while a longer target may allow a slower restore from storage. For the business, RTO translates into the cost of being offline, in lost revenue, idle staff, and missed commitments.

What’s the 3-2-1 Rule?

The 3-2-1 rule is a long-standing guideline for storing backups so that no single failure can wipe out all of them. It calls for three copies of your data, kept on two different types of media, with one copy stored offsite.

Each number addresses a risk. Three copies mean losing one still leaves two. Two media types, for example a local disk and cloud storage, guard against a fault that affects one kind of storage. The offsite copy guards against a site-level event such as a fire, flood, or theft that could destroy everything in one building. 

Ransomware makes the rule more important, because it often spreads to backups kept on the same network as production systems. For a decision-maker, it is a quick test to put to any provider: ask where the copies live, and whether one is genuinely separated from the rest.

Types of Backup and Disaster Recovery

Most backup strategies combine more than one of these types rather than relying on a single one. The choice is not only about cost or storage. Each type changes how long a backup takes to run and how quickly you can restore from it, which ties directly to the RPO and RTO targets described above. 

The three standard types are full, incremental, and differential, and they are often used together. A common pattern is a periodic full backup paired with more frequent incremental or differential backups in between.

Full

A full backup copies all of the selected data in one operation, every time it runs. The result is a single, complete, self-contained set. Its strength is recovery. Because everything is in one place, restoring is straightforward and fast: you pull from the most recent full backup and you are done. 

The cost is on the other side. A full backup takes the most time to run and the most storage space, since it copies everything whether or not it has changed. Running one every day is impractical for most organizations with large volumes of data. For that reason, a full backup is usually run periodically, for example weekly, and used as the baseline that the other two types build on.

Incremental

An incremental backup copies only the data that has changed since the last backup of any type. After a full backup on Sunday, Monday’s incremental copies only what changed since Sunday. Tuesday’s incremental copies only what changed since Monday, and so on. Each one captures a small slice of change.

This makes incremental backups fast to run and light on storage, so you can run them often. Frequent backups support a tighter RPO, because less time passes between copies. The trade-off appears at recovery. To restore, you need the last full backup plus every incremental in the chain that followed it, applied in order. That takes longer than a single restore, and if one link in the chain is missing or corrupted, the backups after it may be unusable.



Differential

A differential backup copies all of the data that has changed since the last full backup, not since the last backup of any type. This is the key difference from an incremental backup. After a full backup on Sunday, Monday’s differential copies everything changed since Sunday. Tuesday’s differential again copies everything changed since Sunday, including Monday’s changes. Each differential is cumulative, so it grows larger until the next full backup resets the cycle.

The payoff is simpler recovery. To restore, you need only two sets: the last full backup and the most recent differential. That is faster and less fragile than reassembling a long incremental chain. The cost is storage and backup time, which climb as each differential repeats the changes captured in the ones before it. The practical choice between the two comes down to which window is tighter for you: incremental favors a fast, light backup, while differential favors a fast, simple restore.

Backup and Disaster Recovery Deployment Models

Where your backups live, and where recovery actually happens, is a separate decision from which backup types you use. This is the deployment model. It determines how fast you can recover, who manages the infrastructure, and how well your setup holds up against a site-level disaster. Three models are common.

On-Premises Backup

On-premises backup keeps your copies on hardware you own and manage at your own location, such as local servers, network-attached storage, or disk. Restoring is fast because the data is close, and you keep full control over where it sits. The limitation is exposure. Backups held in the same building as your production systems share the same risks, so a fire, flood, or theft can destroy the originals and the backups at once. On its own, on-premises backup does not satisfy the offsite copy that the 3-2-1 rule calls for.

Cloud Backup (BaaS)

Cloud backup, often sold as Backup as a Service or BaaS, copies your data over the network to a provider’s offsite data center on a schedule you set. The provider runs and maintains the backup infrastructure, which removes the hardware and management burden from your team and shifts the cost to a subscription. It also gives you the offsite copy automatically.

The point to understand is what BaaS does and does not cover. It protects your data, not your running systems. After a major outage you may still need to rebuild servers and applications before you can restore into them, which lengthens recovery. Large restores also depend on network speed, so pulling back many terabytes can take time.



Hybrid Backup and DRaaS

A hybrid model keeps copies in both places, on-site for fast local restores and in the cloud for the offsite copy. This balances quick recovery against protection from a site-level disaster, and it is a common way to meet the 3-2-1 rule in practice.

Disaster Recovery as a Service, or DRaaS, goes a step further than backup. The provider continuously replicates your servers, applications, and infrastructure to a standby environment in the cloud. When a disaster takes down your primary site, you fail over to that environment and keep operating, then fail back once the primary site is restored. 

Because systems are kept ready to run rather than only stored, DRaaS targets the shortest downtime, which matters most when every hour offline is expensive. That capability costs more than backup alone.

Prepare for and Prevent Disaster With IPM

IPM provides managed backup and disaster recovery built around your recovery targets, backed by 24/7 monitoring, private data centers, and SOC 2 Type 1 controls. A dedicated Technology Manager helps you plan for continuity and recover fast when it counts. 

Discover IPM’s backup and disaster recovery solutions.

FAQs

What Is a Reasonable RTO for a Small Business?

Any organization that relies on digital systems to store sensitive information or deliver critical services benefits from regular IT audits. If your business must prove regulatory It depends on what downtime costs you. Many target under an hour for revenue-generating systems and a day or more for non-critical ones.

What Are the Different Types of Backups?

Full copies everything. Incremental copies changes since the last backup. Differential copies changes since the last full backup.

What Is DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service)?

A service that replicates your systems to a standby cloud environment, letting you fail over and keep operating during a disaster, not just restore data.

How Does IPM Support BDR?

IPM provides managed backup and disaster recovery with continuity planning, 24/7 monitoring, private data centers, and a dedicated Technology Manager.