Difference between VSS fullbackup and VSS copy backup

The difference between VSS Full Backup and VSS Copy Backup in Windows Server 2008 R2…

** The basic difference between these two are, VSS full Backup will truncates logs and VSS Copy Backup does not **

-> Each and every application we installed, creates a transaction log file, If we are using third party tools to take the backup, it will delete the log files at the end of the backup.

-> When we do VSS copy backup, it will backed up and you preserve the all the applications files including log files on the live system.

-> VSS Copy backup cannot be used while taking incremental, differential backup since it will not preserve the sequence of incremental and differential backups

Commands:

(1) wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:<d>: -AllCritical  -SystemState -vssfull (VSSFull backup)

(2) wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:d: -AllCritical  -SystemState -vsscopy (VSS copy backup)

 

Other links :

 

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/filecab/2008/05/20/what-is-the-difference-between-vss-full-backup-and-vss-copy-backup-in-windows-server-2008/