Sauvegardes

Sauvegardes is the French term for backups. In information technology, a sauvegarde is a copy of data, a system state, or an application created to recover to a known-good condition after data loss, corruption, accidental deletion, hardware failure, or disaster. Backups are stored separately from the original data and are designed to enable restoration without relying on the active, potentially compromised, environment.

Common backup types include full backups (a complete copy of selected data), incremental backups (only changes since the last backup), and differential backups (changes since the last full backup). Mirror backups provide a direct replica. Backups can be kept locally on external drives or network storage, on tape, or in the cloud. Techniques such as snapshots and versioning capture point-in-time states to facilitate restoration to specific moments. Retention policies govern how long backups are kept; the 3-2-1 rule—three copies of data, on at least two media, with one offsite—is a widely recommended guideline.

Operational considerations include the regular automation of backup tasks, verification of backups through restore tests, and data integrity checks. Security measures such as encryption in transit and at rest, strong access controls, and compliance with data protection laws (for example, GDPR) are important to protect backed-up data.

In finance, a related but distinct usage of the term sauvegarde may refer to reserves or safeguarding assets; however, in computing contexts sauvegardes primarily denote data copies intended for recovery. The etymology traces back to the French sauvegarder, meaning to save or safeguard.