Marlyse Comte told us: >a backup is a copy of a file, either on the same drive, or an external >drive or a cd-rom or something other external, meant to be there if the >original file gets corrupted or anything the like happens. > >an archive is something stored away for potential later retrieval and no >longer residing in the active database. keeps the active database slim, >lean and fast while still allowing access (if needed) to older information.
Marlyse, I think I'm not agreeing 100% with your terminology. For me a backup is a copy of *data*, not just files. An archiver application like eMa can also be used for backups, that is copying *the data*, ie in this case the content, to preferrably another physical medium *while keeping* the same data in the main storage. Data may live in a 1:1 relation to the physical file, but simetimes they are not identical and backing up content may be a better idea. Independence of main storage DB corruption is one reason. Even if I prefer to maintain a big mail DB, as I want my messages at my fingertips, I may still need to backup new messages with another solution besides making a copy of my very big Db files every week (or heaven forbid every day even less so). So I don't see why I would be content with copying the Db files every time, just because I have a big DB.
