Snapshot vs. Backup: Essential insights for effective data protection

Your business runs on data, and losing it for any reason can shut down operations and put you in a tough situation fast. Data protection is the foundation of your company's business continuity, encompassing various strategies to safeguard your valuable information against hardware failure, cyberattacks, human mistakes and, of course, natural disasters.

As the name suggests, data protection is tightly focused on preserving your company’s data and preventing losing it for good under any circumstances. To restore data during unexpected situations, you must have in place backups, snapshots and disaster recovery solutions, where each serves a specific purpose in your overall strategy.

Maybe you are wondering, whether you need a snapshot or backup of your data? Well, you must first understand the difference between these two solutions.

Snapshots capture the state of your system at a specific point in time and are stored on the same infrastructure as your original data. That makes them ideal for quick rollbacks to recent versions, such as reverting changes from the last few hours or days. But they have one significant drawback: snapshots depend on the underlying storage infrastructure, so if it fails, both your original data and snapshots are at risk.

Backups, on the other hand, successfully create complete and, most importantly, independent copies of your data stored in a different location from the source system. They are designed for advanced disaster recovery and long-term retention. This means that even if your systems are hit by ransomware, hardware failure or natural disaster, your backup remains intact and recoverable.

Your business can't afford to learn this difference the hard way. If you manage virtual machines in VMware, leverage AWS cloud services or run Proxmox environments, understanding when to use snapshots or backups could save your company from catastrophic data loss and costly regulatory penalties and fines.

This article guides you through the technical differences between these data protection methods, explains where and when they work best, and helps you build a strategy that actually protects your business.

A snapshot is a point-in-time reference to your data that preserves the state of a virtual machine, file system or server at a specific moment. Instead of duplicating all files, the snapshot records which data blocks were in use at that time. Once the initial snapshot is created, subsequent snapshots track only the blocks that change, making the process fast and efficient in terms of storage. Apart from saving space and time, the real advantage of snapshots is instant recovery. You can roll back a virtual machine or file system to undo a bad update, recover from human error or safely test changes. Think of snapshots as an “undo” button for recent changes.

However, it is essential to remember that snapshots are not a replacement for backups stored in a separate location. They help reduce data loss from recent mistakes, but if the host, storage, or site is hit by hardware failure, ransomware or data corruption, local snapshots may also be lost or encrypted. For cybersecurity and data protection, use snapshots for fast rollback and pair them with offsite, immutable backups for true resilience.

A backup is your complete copy of all your data, applications and operating system. It can be stored in multiple locations, such as hard drives, data centers and cloud storage.

Having a replica of your data gives you the ability to recover after a hardware failure, data corruption, cyberattack, or natural disaster, providing you with peace of mind knowing that if there is a problem with your primary systems, you can restore your source files, apps and OS without losing valuable information.

There are three main types of backups:

• Full backups: They create a complete copy of all the data on your system, allowing you to recover from scratch.
• Incremental backups: Only copy data that has changed since the last backup, which speeds up the backup process and reduces unnecessary data duplication, thereby saving storage space.
• Differential backups: Copy all the files that have been added or changed since your last full backup. It's important to understand that each subsequent differential backup captures all changes made since the initial full backup, so its size grows with each additional differential backup until the next full backup resets it.

Using third-party software for automated data protection that stores your raw data across virtual environments ensures your business continuity even when your primary data center faces system failures, cyberattacks, or natural disasters that could result in permanent data loss if you do not have backups in place.

Snapshots are useful for quick, short-term rollbacks, but they restore the VM as a whole and don’t provide the granular recovery options many businesses need. Durable backups let you restore individual files, disks or application items (e.g., Exchange mailboxes or database tables) without performing a full VM rollback. Critically, snapshot-only protection often fails to meet compliance requirements: snapshots are typically mutable and stored alongside production data, lacking immutable offsite retention, retention policies and auditable controls. For compliance and operational resilience, use immutable off-site backups with application-aware, granular restore capabilities and documented DR runbooks.

Snapshots are usually stored on the same storage system as your original data. Backups, however, are stored in a secondary location like another data center, cloud service or off-site storage.

Remember that snapshots are the best option when you need fast rollbacks after an accidental deletion or after making changes that negatively affect your systems. By using snapshot-based backups, you can quickly restore data to a previous point in time before the problem occurred.

However, if the server dies, for instance, or a hardware failure, cyberattack or natural disaster occurs, a snapshot may be lost with it. This illustrates the key difference between a snapshot and a backup: a solid backup solution keeps independent source files elsewhere, allowing you to restore even when the original source is lost.

If we are to be sincere, the best thing you can do is to use them both. Why is that? Snapshots equip you with quick fixes during minor incidents. However, you still need backups to protect the original data beyond the box that runs it, across time and distance. That's why you need both to build a safer backup strategy that limits data loss and keeps you running regardless of the circumstances.

Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud offers a comprehensive backup solution, including full, incremental, and differential backups, with features like instant recovery and immutable storage to ensure data protection across various environments.

Your business creates critical data every day — customer records, financials, configs, project files. Without proper protection, a single hardware failure or cyber incident can cause catastrophic data loss.

Protecting that data requires layered policies, not a single technique. Snapshots provide fast, point-in-time images of a file system and are useful for quick rollbacks; however, they live on the same storage and are not a substitute for backups. Backups provide durable, restorable copies you can keep offsite and under immutability policies.

Follow a multi-copy strategy (a baseline of 3-2-1 is recommended: three copies, two media types, one offsite) and design your approach around your RPO/RTO goals — retention, replication and recovery speed should match business needs. Test runbooks regularly so your recovery works when you need it.

Acronis Cyber Protect delivers the capabilities needed in that model: full, incremental and differential backups (and continuous protection where required); broad coverage across physical, virtual and cloud platforms; and fast recovery options that let you boot from backups to minimize downtime. In short: use snapshots for short-term rollbacks, use immutable off-site backups for resilience, and validate recoveries through regular DR testing.

Business data is the core asset — including customer records, apps, configs and transaction logs — and must be protected to maintain operations and drive growth. Snapshots are useful for fast, short-term rollbacks, but they reside on the same storage and are not a substitute for durable backups that you can retain offsite and protect immutably.

Design backup/DR around measurable RPO/RTO targets: choose retention, replication and recovery methods that meet those objectives and validate them with regular runbook tests. Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud provides automated, policy-driven protection across physical, virtual and cloud workloads (full/differential/incremental and application-consistent options), immutable offsite retention, and fast recovery workflows to reduce downtime and operational overhead. In short: use snapshots for operational convenience, rely on immutable off-site backups for resilience, and verify recovery through routine DR testing.