In our humble opinion, a backup is worth nothing if it's in a proprietary format which binds you to the use of a closed source program. That's why we have decided to go with standard archive formats whose definitions are openly publicized. Akeeba Backup generates backups in the following archive formats:
- ZIP. ZIP files are ubiquitous. Virtually all major operating systems support them out of the box. Even cell phones do! This is why we are supporting ZIP. However, PHP and ZIP do not get along very well, because of the time consuming calculations this format requires. This occasionaly makes backup archives produced appear as corrupt, whereas the data is intact. To this end we have created two utilities, Akeeba Kickstart and Akeeba eXtract Wizard which cater for ZIP archive extraction using a web based and Windows wizard interface respectively. We also support the split ZIP format, which breaks down the generated ZIP file in multiple equal-sized parts, making it ideal for hosts which impose a limit on the maximum size per file.
- JPA. The JoomlaPack Archive format is an open archive standard, highly suitable for producing large archives from within a PHP application. It is widely used with Akeeba Backup and its predecessor, JoomlaPack. Due to the lack of third-party support and in order to facilitate extraction we have created two utilities, Akeeba Kickstart and Akeeba eXtract Wizard which cater for JPA archive extraction using a web based and Windows wizard interface respectively. We have also introduced the split JPA format, which breaks down the generated JPA file in multiple equal-sized parts, making it ideal for hosts which impose a limit on the maximum size per file.
