IT Managed Services Glossary of Terms

Differential backup
A backup of all changes made after the last full backup. The advantage to this is the quicker recovery time, requiring only a full backup and the latest differential backup to restore the system. The disadvantage is that for each day elapsed since the last full backup, more data needs to be backed up.

Disaster recovery
Disaster recover is the process used to restore your backed up data in the event of a disaster.

Disk
A round plate on which data can be stored. Disks are divided into two categories magnetic (floppy disks, hard disk drives) and Optical (CD-ROM, DVDS).

Disk Drives
A machine that reads and writes data onto a disk. There are many different types of disk drives i.e. a hard disk drive which writes info to a hard drive or a Floppy drive which writes information to a floppy disk.

Drive image
This is a form of backup which captures the entire contents of a drive including operating system, programs and user data to a single file. This file could be an incremental backup from a previous so only the changes would be taken. In turn the file could be sent online to a remote server, in case of fire / flood / etc.

Encryption
A method used to convert data (in the form of passwords, files or emails) into an illegible format if intercepted or accessed without the correct Encryption Key. The Key is a pass phrase set by the user encrypting the data before it is stored / sent online, with the encryption software performing complex mathematical operations on the data.