Difference between archive and backup

What is difference between food and stake?
Food is very broad term, Stake is just one type of food.

Backup is also broad term. Archive is just one type of backup.

I would recommend to make full image of the HDD as a must have backup. This is where USB Recovery stick is used.

Archive can be generated manually from smartPad or through network using Work visual

Another option is to configure Bacup Manager. For example it can be setup to make automatic daily backup for up to a year....

"Backup" is a generic term. "Archive" is KUKA's specific name for their standard type of Archive. A KUKAbot can create an Archive een while the robot is running, without stopping or slowing production.

There are different "levels" of Archive on KUKAbots. Generally, most people just use "Archive All" -- this creates a .zip file containing all the robot programs and configuration files -- generally, everything that makes the robot different from the day it was shipped from the factory. Outside of some special cases, this is normally enough to recover the robot 100% from a "factory fresh" condition. That is, if your robot hard drive were completely destroyed, you could replace the hard drive, install the base Windows/KSS operating system package (hence "factory fresh"), then insert your Archive file and tell the robot to "Restore All". At that point, your robot should be 100% recovered, as if nothing had ever happened.

Archive Config, Archive Programs, etc, perform smaller Archives that are a sub-set of Archive All.

A hard drive image (that is, a set of files that records the entire hard drive of the robot, down to the last bit) is a much more comprehensive backup. On KRC4s, this can only be done using the special KSR USB stick from KUKA, or by removing the hard drive from the robot and cloning it using something like CloneZilla or Acronis on a standalone PC. This would allow you to recover your robot even if you don't have the factory-reinstall media. However, it also takes quite a bit longer, and requires rebooting the robot a few times.

In general, Best Practice is to create a KSR image of a robot when that robot's configuration is finalized and the robot is put into production (with the resulting files stored safely somewhere), and Archives are taken regularly (every month, week, or even daily, depending on how often program changes are being made) throughout the robot's production lifetime. This way, in the event of a disaster, you can recover the entire hard drive using the KSR image, then "update" the robot to the date/time of the most recent Archive.

SkyeFire - Thanks very much for the comprehensive reply which is a huge help, I've been asked to help back up some Kuka robot PC's as I'm an IT guy but I'm not at all familiar with them. The team responsible for the robots have been taking archives using the option the HMI but to be more complete, also want full backup images restored to spare drives which makes sense.

I couldn't get a display output from the PC itself and I was wary of pulling the drive when I don't know the drive structure but it seems that should be fine to use our normal Acronis tool. When you say that approach needs the robot rebooted a few times, is that because the PC needs powered down for the drive removal? Are there any risks to this approach? I've done it many times on normal PC's but I don't understand much of this system and they can't tolerate much downtime on it.

How is the KSR USB stick obtained? I've looked through one of the boxes that came with the machine and I can find a few disks some of which look like they can be used to restore the system but no sign of a USB stick so I'm wondering if that's to be purchased separately.

You can do the image like you are doing with harddisks of normal computers. And of course the robot has to be switched off to get out the harddisk. And then there is exact one reboot.
The special kuka USB stick must be purchased separately. If you use him to make an image there are two reboots do be done. One for imaging and one after imaging for normal operation. It's the same as you use for example an acronis bootstick, but the kukabots don't boot from a none kuka USB stick.