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Best Free Backup Program
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Introduction
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Dear reader: Having tested several dozen different backup utilities I have discovered there are a lot of different opinions among both developers & users about how backup programs should be built and function. It is apparent that when it comes to backup programs there is no such thing as “one-size-fits-all,” because everyone’s backup needs are different. Because of this, the programs reviewed below will attempt to focus on what I believe the needs of the average user are. The main things I am taking into account for the top recommendations are as follows.
Note: There are a lot of free backup programs that have some unique features and excellent functionality that really deserve mentioning, but room here does not allow. If you are looking for more advanced programs, or some specific functionality, please check out the third links in the section directly below. Recommended Reading:
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Discussion
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It supports a variety of backup methods including incremental and differential zip archives which they call “partial backups” and they are presented in clear understandable terminology. Each type of backup can be fine tuned with certain file property parameters, including archive “bit” set and reset. (bit is a type of attribute flag that indicates a file has changed since it was last backed up) Archives can be encrypted if you need extra security. Archives can be automatically named by date stamp and split to any desired size. It supports to backing up to any local, network, or online storage that supports ftp,(SSL included) and it has the built in support for burning files directly to CD/DVD. Backup maker supports restoring files to original or a new location. You can restore a whole backup, or just a single file. A nice search feature is included for finding a desired file in the zip archive. The my only complaints would be that the wizard does not include options for auto selection of commonly backup files and folders, and it does not support backing up open/locked files. Also when I tried to restore a password protected archive, the password entry dialog popped up under the restore window, and for a while I thought the program had crashed or frozen. I had to minimize the main programs windows to enter the password. Another minor inconvenience is a popup nag screen that informs the user that the free version is for personal use only, and that it will be removed if you register it for commercial use. Other than that there is no difference between the free and commercial versions. In testing the program on Win 7, I found all features to work as advertised. It is easy enough for a beginner to use, but robust enough for a pro. It has a decent help file in pdf form that covers each aspect of the backup process if you encounter any problems. I think Backup Maker is a great all around file backup program, and give it my top recommendation.
The major reason I am recommending it here is because of a feature it has inherited from its commercial siblings in the Backup4all family, namely its ability to use application specific backup plugins to backup a variety of settings and databases for popular programs. For example there are plugins that will help you set up automatic backups of popular email clients like Outlook Express, Windows Mail, or Mozilla Thunderbird. There is also a dedicated forum for FBackup and support for bugs, errors, and other problems seems quite decent. Overall it does what it does quite well, and while a little light on features, still offers some very desirable functionality. Genie Timeline Free Edition: This is a very nice looking simple backup The developers of Genie Timeline, call this software a Continuous Data Protection (CDP) solution. However, with the free version, it would be better called a hourly CDP, as the automatic backup feature is locked in at 1 hour intervals. (Although you can manually run the backup at any time you wish.) Still monitoring of file changes is done in real-time and your protection level is displayed by a percentage along with the time until the next automatic backup will occur. Be aware that Genie Timeline is more that just a simple backup program, but as the name, Timeline, suggests it is also a versioning program. That is, it keeps older versions of any files that change, so you can “go back in time” and get different revisions of the same file. Unfortunately in the free version, the feature to consolidate and purge unnecessary old files is disabled. This could lead to maxing out a hard drive fairly quickly if you work will a lot of larger size files, that change frequently, such as video files. In order to avoid this problem, you might consider pairing this program with another backup solution, and selectively using Genie Timeline’s features only on files and folders where frequent backups and versioning are desired.
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TIP — Can't Find What You Need in the Choices Below? Try Our 
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Related Products and Links
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| You should also check out the categories Best Free Folder Synchronization Program, and Best Free Drive Imaging Program which are similar and other types of backup programs. |
See the following website for free plugins for your favorite program. http://www.backup4all.com/en/backup-plugins.html
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Editor
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| This software category is maintained by volunteer editor Ritho. Registered members can contact the editor with any comments or questions they might have by clicking here. |
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Tags
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| best free back up programs, top backup programs, free backup tools, free backup utility, free disk backup, free drive backup free disk imaging, free file based backup and sync, free folder sync programs. |
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Comments
Hi,
It's a really excellent piece of writing here and explanation. I finally understand what I should be looking for to choose best option. Really thanks for this.
Some people mentioned Areca Backup:
http://www.areca-backup.org/features.php
I find this program one of the best free tools. Before, I thought I'd go with Backup Maker, Genie Timeline Free Edition, or Toucan. However, after reading comments a few readers pointed out some issue with Toucan (apparently, it crashes) and Genie Timeline. The others mentioned Areca Backup.
So, Areca Backup is free and very functional. How about its file validation feature, if there is any at all? I don't really understand how validation works to be honest. I'd be grateful if someone would explain that :)
In FAQ, I found some explanation:
"How does Areca detect modified or new files when incremental backups are chosen ?
Areca uses the file's size and last modification time to detect modified files. If one of these attributes is modified (whatever its value is), the file is flagged as modified.
Since v7.2.17, Areca can also inspect the file's content to detect modifications of its content (which is much slower than detection based on attributes) "
but I don't know if this is the same as validation.
Cheers.
I like Cobian. Very simply backup. Easy to restore a file too. Sometimes I just want to restore a version of file, not an entire backup set.
http://www.cobiansoft.com/cobianbackup.htm
I have been trying for four days to do a backup using Backupmaker. After several attempts taking many hours each, I have been forced to give up.
On only two of the attempts has it got as far as completing verification. On both of those, it has failed to write to the DVD. Each say" Taghet directory cannot be readed(sic)/verified.
If you held a gun to my head, I would not be using application programs to do live writes to DVDs.
If I must end up with the storage on a DVD, then I would tell the 'applications' to backup to somewhere else, and then I would use [edited] to burn the files to a DVD (with Verify set.)
I am not saying you would do the following, but a lot of people do.
Even though I am Scottish, I would not be tight enough to be adding data to an existing DVD. It amazes me that people do that, with something as important as a backup.
(And that goes for you people out there that do Incremental backups.)
Thanks for the reply, rob. Since I am only one sixteenth Scottish, perhaps one sixteenth Scotch and the remainder, human, you lost me.
I have very little understanding of computers and use them to search for information and to write with - I do a lot of writing, mostly on political matters. In my youth, the only calculator was called a comptometer and it was the size of a typewriter ( or a desktop PC.)
(I have not backed this one up in years: Windows keeps telling me to insert a certain Disk - thatdoes not exist. But, after enduring a couple of years of freezes and crashes, I thought it about time to back up since there are score of articles I have written on there and many hindreds of emails.
I assumed that "Backup" means having a copy somewhere. If not on a disk, then where? Without technicalities. Why can I not just stick a DVD in the slot and click something that copies to it?
Burning to a DVD should be done with a reliable program, that has years of development experience in that specific area, such as [mention of commercial software removed]
Also I prefer it to be a single action. EG You list the files for the program, and it then burns them in a single action.
I am assuming that you don't have a network, and don't have external drives connected ?
Some people might recommend having your backups write to a thumb drive, but I am a bit nervous about that.
I would create a folder for your backups (eg C:\BKUPs\) and get your backup program to copy to there. And then every so often burn that folder to a CD or DVD. If your data is not massive, and fits on a CD, I would burn to a CD. (Get a decent brand.)
How often you burn, will depend on how important your feel your recent 'typings' are to you.
Iperius Backup Free:
http://www.iperiusbackup.com/
http://www.iperiusbackup.com/download-software-backup.aspx
Now there is a new function:
Copying and zip compression of paths over 255 characters
You have caught my attention, with that.
I used to organize my own folders, with the intention of being able to manually Zip them, and then burn to CD.
I came unstuck because of long paths, and I have never attempted zipping (for backups) since.
Users of the excellent Backup Maker may be interested to know that, after several requests, Ascomp.de have added an English language forum at https://www.ascomp.de/forum/ (NB If the page appears in German, click on 'Deutsch' on the bottom left of the page and select the English option). Great!
Has anyone used Toucan on a desktop. I used it to sync files with a memory stick. I would like to use it to backup files from a PC to an external hard drive. It's a program I am familiar with and would like to keep using it.
I would like to invite you to take a look at another free backup client - called "Duplicati".
http://www.duplicati.com/
I quote its developers:
"Duplicati is a free backup client that securely stores encrypted, incremental, compressed backups on cloud storage services and remote file servers. It works with Amazon S3, Windows Live SkyDrive, Google Drive (Google Docs), Rackspace Cloud Files or WebDAV, SSH, FTP (and many more).
Duplicati has built-in AES-256 encryption and backups can be signed using GNU Privacy Guard. A built-in scheduler makes sure that backups are always up-to-date. Last but not least, Duplicati provides various options and tweaks like filters, deletion rules, transfer and bandwidth options to run backups for specific purposes."
Perhaps the responsible of this rubric will test Duplicati, in the near future; and then will share his impressions about it.-
Hi guys
software looks great, I'm looking for file backup software that allows me to backup files over the network, and being able to see what link did not backup.
any suggestions ?
velhote posted a question re incremental backups.
I cannot believe that people fool around with incremental backups.
If your data is important enough to backup, then -
- Don't save money, or space, by doing incremental backups
- Keep your backups as simple as is humanly possible
Just thought I should point out the huge error in suggesting that using incremental backup process is "foolish".
On the contrary, for some backup processes it is ** essential **.
Yes, if you have ** very ** small amounts of data, then it is advisable to use the full backup process.
However, every business I have ever worked in as a system administrator has used incremental backup extensively. The reason for this is simple: if you have 100GB of data to backup, and you back it up using a full backup method, you will be buying a £50 1TB disk every ten backups.
These days 100GB is not a lot of data - people have amateur photo, music and video archives that are easily 3 times that amount.
It is simply too easy to say that everyone should backup using a full backup process - yes in a perfect world they should. But in the real world this would be a very expensive solution.
Your review is one, if not THE best, of all of the many backup reviews I've ever read in internet. Congratulations. I have a question concerning parcial backup: I installed a lot of programs listed in this review and tested them. But when I deleted a file in the original source, the parcial backups (ie.: incremental or differencial) didn't recognized that. That is, they only ADD files to the partial backups, but do not mirror/equalize them (do not delete in the backup the deleted file in the source). The only exception for that was Toucan, but Toucan didn't work in my computer (crashed all times). Is there another one that does that? Thank you.
i have been using Syncback Free for several weeks ...i just love it. so easy. takes a little thinking when setting it up but nothing hard and it makes native backups so everything is there. between syncback and macrium reflect i think i have it all covered . just my opinion.
Great info on these products and I appreciate the time people take to describe their own selections.
What I'm looking for is a program that will backup my system such that it will provide me with a choice to either do a file or system backup, meaning everything!
At the same time, it should be capable of backing up on a daily basis if need be on anything I do or save and when I call for a backup it will do that on those items that were used and still maintain the integrity of what info/data I already have saved.
Is that possible under freeware?
thanks
FBackup works for me. It will backup to my external with one click syncing exactly what I want. I tried BackupMaker, but liked FBackup better. I've used it for maybe a year. Nothing works better for me.
what would cause a computer to refuse to recognise the presence of a backup disk used before to recover lost data and yet the same disk drive will play dvd's? This refusal is of all my back up disks
With a new bad habit in photography, I quickly filled up the primary drive on my 8-year-old computer. It still runs well, and I'm not ready to replace it yet. I purchased a new gigabit wireless router and two 1TB NAS devices with gigabit. Not really worried about the OS and software restoration on the computer as it will probably be replaced soon. So my strategy is to leave OS and software on the HD, and use one of the NAS devices as my main storage with the second as backup. Questions: 1)what is the best way to make the initial move of the data only (pictures, music, video, and other files) from the HD to the first NAS device, and 2)what is the best program to do the backup from NAS1 to NAS2? It sounds like FBackup is the software to accomplish the backup?
I use Windows XP Backup to make a full system backup every 3 months, to restore my computer to its original state in case of a crash.
What I need is a simple "copy" backup for daily cumulative incrementals between those three months intervals. The key features I need are:
1. Able to specify "Only files modified after XXX date" (I want to specify the date manually, i.e., NOT "since last backup" nor based on the Archive bit (I find this feature missing in most backup programs)
2. Able to backup as a straight copy (preserving the directory structure, non-proprietary format)
3. Able to select any combination of folders (e.g., "My Documents/Important/") and specific files (e.g., my Mozilla bookmarks). Able to exclude certain folders and files would be a plus.
4. Able to backup copies of files in use (this is not that critical since I use the daily backup for data files and I know which applications (Outlook, for one, but not Thunderbird) I have to close before running the backup.
I'm currently managing with a .bat script using xcopy to get my Items 1 and 2 above, with multiple xcopy commands to emulate Item 3, but as you can imagine it's unwieldy and I'm sure an easier solution exists. But it must have the feature of being able to do incremental backups based on a DATE that I specify manually. Any suggestions?
Try Karen's Replicator. Download from www.karenware.com (Freeware)
Oh, two features more that I forgot to mention:
5. Support for multiple source partitions (I have 4 partitions on my hard drive since I have a dual boot system, and although most of my data that I backup is on G:, some files maintained by programs like bookmarks, etc., are on my system drive).
6. A renaming of destination folder feature (this solves the multiple partition problem--Item 5 above--also). There are two reasons for this: One is the multiple partition problem above (I could, for example, backup c:/My Documents/ to "PARTITION-C/My Documents/" and F:/My Documents/ to "PARTITION-F/My Documents/"). The other is that when I select an individual file to backup like my Mozilla sessionstore (but let's say I don't care about the rest of what's in the Mozilla profile directory), I'd like to copy it simply to MOZILLA/sessionstore.js (and not unnecessarily recreate the entire directory structure of F:\Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\sajhfgadg.default\sessionstore.js. This is, of course, very easy to do with my xcopy script, but also something usually missing from backup software.
On second thoughts, Item 6 will make restore kind of complicated, so forget about that and let's replace it by:
6. Support for automatic restore (copy back all files from backup that are newer on backup, optionally warning, without copying, about existing files that are older on backup than on disk being copied to).
How would I best back up my documents, download folder, and program files in Vista? Also all my bookmarks in IE9 and FF? All this is new to a "newbie." Thank you
Just found an even better, (and truly FREE), backup solution!
Download Create Synchronicity: http://synchronicity.sourceforge.net/
The first backup may take a few hours, (depending upon the amount of files you have on your source drive). But when it's done, you'll have an EXACT copy of your COMPLETE system at almost ALL times. The settings can be made to accommodate about any imaginable need. I also make a system image backup, (about once a week). As far as I can tell, this could very well be the most foolproof FREE backup method I've come across.
There is an excellent free program from the makers of Backup Maker called Synchredible. It keeps an EXACT copy of your folder(s) or complete drive(s) on an external drive. First it backs up what you command it to. Then it will synchronize one way, or both ways. You set the synchronization schedule according to your preferences. (I chose to have it synch once a day). One of the default settings is every ten minutes.
The program installed without a hitch on my Win 7 64-bit system. And is very lite on ram and cpu usage. I've tried almost every single backup program offered, both on this site and others. And Synchredile is by far the best out of any of the ones I've tried.
https://www.ascomp.de/en/products/show/product/synchredible/tab/details
have been using auslogics bitreplica for a month or two now and it seems to do a good job
anyone else tried it and what do you think
hi rick, i also tried auslogics for a couple months..not bad. i had used their disc defrag which is great. the other day while reading some comments i tried syncback ..i have only used it for a day and set it up with about 18 things to backup to different drives and such. i like it a lot and its very fast and simple enough to use. i think its worth a try.