While incremental backups give much greater flexibility and granularity (time between backups), they have the reputation for taking longer to restore because the backup has to be reconstituted from the last full backup and all the incremental backups since.

Is incremental backup better?

As a result, incremental backups are generally better in the cloud because they typically consume fewer resources. Incremental backups are also smaller than differential backups. With storage space as a big element of cost in the cloud, the smaller the backup, the better.

Why is incremental backup important?

The sole purpose of incremental file backup is to capture any changes that have happened since the last archive. In IT, and specifically in data recovery and backup, it's usually less important whether the previous backup was another incremental backup or a full backup. The consequences may be important, however.