What Is Copy-on-Write?

It is a resource-management technology applied in computer programming to implement a copy or duplicate on modifiable resources efficiently.

Still, modifications must create a copy.

Snapshot vs Backup: Differences Between Backup and Snapshot

So, the technique the copy operation is deferred until the first write.

What are the differences between snapshot and backup?

This article compares them in both VMware and SQL servers.

Full vs Incremental vs Differential Backup: Which Is Better?

Applications of Copy on Write Tech

In general, copy-on-write technology can be used in three aspects.

The process usually doesnt modify any memory and immediately executes a new process, replacing the address space entirely.

It can be extended to support efficient memory allocation by having a page ofphysical memoryfilled with zeros.

Copy-on-write pages are also applied in theLinux Kernels Kernel same-page merging utility.

Loading the libraries for an app also takes advantage of the COW technique.

In the PHP programming language, all types except references are implemented as copy-on-write.

In the Qt framework, lots of types are COW.

Thus, the advantages of copy on write are valid in both single- and multithreaded systems.

Usually, the snapshots save only the changed data.

They are stored near the main array.

Thus, they are only a weak form of incremental backup and cant substitute for a full backup.

Differential backup vs incremental backup vs full backup, which one is the best?

Or, it depends?

Read this article and find all the info you desired.

While COW does two data writes compared to ROWs one; its difficult to implement efficiently and used infrequently.

It was nicknamed Dirty COW.

This timing attack (CVE-2016-5195) would permit a local user to modify the read-only portion of COW data.

Luckily, this vulnerability was quickly patched.

The new and powerful Windows 11 will bring you many benefits.

At the same time, it will also bring you some unexpected damages such as data loss.

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