You might be startled by just how many third-party backup products there are to choose from. We were even more surprised by the sheer number and complexity of purchase and subscription options for those products. Those that offer a free version try sometimes very aggressively to upsell you to one of their paid plans, which typically come in multiple tiers, in home and commercial versions, and with varying discounts for longer subscription terms and multiple licenses.
Getting all the bells and whistles you think you need, especially if you have multiple devices to protect, can run up a pretty hefty bill. Our focus in this guide is on backup software for home and small business environments, where there's no IT staff and no managed network.
That means ease of use is paramount. All the products we've included here have a good reputation, as evidenced by comments on public forums and reviews from trusted sources. It's worth noting that backups can fail for a variety of reasons, usually at the worst possible time, so we've given extra marks to companies that offer easily accessible support options. The most important feature we looked for is the ability to create a backup image that can be stored on a local drive typically USB or network storage.
Some programs also offer the ability to back up to the cloud. We've highlighted those programs for the benefit of those who have that combination of manageable data sets and high bandwidth that make an all-cloud option feasible. We didn't include products like Carbonite , which are exclusively focused on cloud-based backup.
Other important features we looked for include easy options for restoring a single file or folder from a backup set, as well as robust scheduling and reporting options. As always, this listing doesn't represent a full hands-on review. We didn't stress-test these apps, and we encourage you to do your own testing to ensure that the backup and restore features especially the latter meet your standards for ease of use and robustness.
The free version of Macrium Reflect 7 is surprisingly robust, offering solid imaging and cloning capabilities that are licensed for use in home and business environments. Acronis is one of the best-known names in backup, with its flagship True Image product recently celebrating its 18th birthday. The latest version, True Image , is available on Windows PCs and MacOS and offers a wide range of antimalware features in addition to the familiar backup tools.
True Image is offered in three subscription editions. All three editions include incremental and differential backups as well as non-stop backups. Acronis doesn't offer a free version of True Image, although you can try it out for free for 30 days without having to supply a credit card. EaseUS Todo Backup comes in three editions, including a free offering that covers most of the backup bases. This is where the best backup software comes into play.
What is the Best Backup Software? Here are my top picks for the best backup software to use this year. Best For: Backblaze is best suited for small businesses and provides an efficient cloud solution to create a backup of business-critical files. Key Features: Version History — Backblaze comes equipped with a default feature to automatically save an old or deleted file for up to 1-year.
You also get the option to save those important files forever at an additional price. You can easily browse your media files, open a word doc, or share a system image on Facebook through mobile devices. Invisible Encryption — Backblaze comes with inbuilt encryption. It automatically encrypts all the files scheduled for backup and transfers them through a secure SSL https or FTP connection to the Backblaze datacenter.
Allows you to easily browse and download all the files on your mobile devices. It offers biometric security, two-factor authentication, and hour staff to ensure the absolute safety of your data.
It comes with a simplified data restore policy. Key Features: Lesser Management — It comes with intuitive user interface and pre-integrated backup appliances to reduce the time consumption by up to 50 percent. Customizable Dashboard — You can easily manage heaps of backups with just two clicks.
It also provides secure, controlled, and self-service recovery by assigning role-based access to backup files. AI-Based Ransomware Detection System — Unitrends smartly analyze complex patterns of data characteristics to alert admins of primary warning signs of a ransomware threat.
It will find important data points, then start syncing the entire system on a local drive. Key Features: Numerous Backup Types — It offers four types of backups, including system, disk, partition, and file backup, to help you pick the right option for greater efficiency. Schedule Backup — Enables you to schedule automatic daily, weekly, or monthly backups. It makes sure that you never miss a single bit of data. Disk Space Manager — It automatically deletes old backups to free up space for new backups.
It also leverages differential or incremental backup to optimize disk space utilization and store more amount of relevant data. Best For: NovaStor is most suitable for IT admins looking for a cost-efficient solution for their data backup challenges. Key Features: Flexibility — It supports various operating systems and virtualization solutions.
Its distributed system architecture ensures optimum throughput while ensuring the least network load. Extensive Customer Support — NovaStor provides efficient support through email, phone, and remote access.
Automated Backup Process — It offers comprehensive heterogeneous restore and backup functions that include monitoring, reporting, and efficient central media management. Moreover, the entire process is automated and runs without interruption with greater fault tolerance. Best For: NAKIVO is best for businesses that are looking for an affordable data backup solution for physical, virtual, and cloud environments.
Incremental Backup — NAKIVO ensures the backup of only changed data blocks to cut down the backup windows, offload the production network, and ensure optimal utilization of the storage space. Flexible Backup — It allows the creation of up to 4, recovery points for easy and faster data recovery. It leverages Grandfather-Father-Son retention policy to rotate these points on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.
Reduce Storage Space Requirement — It efficiently removes duplicate data blocks to save more backup space. It further saves the storage space by increasing the data space by up to 10 times. Best For: Retrospect is a suitable fit for individuals and business owners who are looking for cost-efficient backup software for Mac devices.
It also provides compliance with data protection laws, including GDPR. Proactive AI — Its backup scripts optimize the backup window of the complete environment. It uses concepts like linear regression and decision tree algorithms to protect all the sources.
Pros: It supports multiple encryption algorithms, including military-grade AES, for both at-rest and in-transit data security Offers a long term backup retention to allow users to retrieve data as old as 5 years It provides the option to create backups of specific sets of data on the cloud.
Best For: If you want a backup tool for your small business, then IDrive is an excellent option. Backup to Dropbox and the like is a nice feature to have. Real time: Real-time backup means that files are backed up whenever they change, usually upon creation or save.
Instead, scheduling should be used. Use continuous backup for rapidly changing data sets where transfer rates are too slow, or computing power is too precious for real-time backup. This is largely to test reliability and hardware compatibility, but we time two: an approximately GB system image two partitions , and a roughly 50GB image created from a set of smaller files and folders. We also test the USB boot drives created by the programs. Acronis True Image R-Drive Image.
Backupper 6 Standard. Also, the backup can be performed with AES bit encryption for extra security. Home users are charged for an annual subscription for a single PC, which offers protection against data loss, ransomware, and hardware failure. There is a trial available for Windows XP and higher, although not for other platforms. This software is focused on traditional drive backup to a media drive, and the developer offers separate solutions for other situations including Android backup and cloud backup needs, keeping Genie Backup Manager from being a more comprehensive application.
The app sits in the Windows system tray as an icon, quietly going about its business. Notable features include the option to have the backup run at full speed via Turbo Mode, or to run in Smart Mode which intelligently adjusts itself based on the available system resources.
There are a few other options worth considering, not least free backup software which is still useful but will tend to have fewer options and configurations you can customize for what you need, plus of course there's always the option to use cloud backup software. Here we'll look more closely at some of those options:. Simply download the Google Backup and Sync app to your computer, install and run, and this will create a folder in your Windows file explorer from to which you can save your most important documents.
While there are paid options to upgrade, this can prove expensive over the long-term if you want to backup and sync a sizable hard drive. Microsoft OneDrive is the backup and sync storage option bundled with Microsoft Office There is a free version that allows up to 10GB of storage, but that it means it suffers from the same limitations as above, not least that you'd be better off using cloning or image software to back up your full hard drive.
Even still, it's a useful keep to keep the most essential files safe. Dropbox is another cloud server that allows you to save important documents online, again being free to use with the same limitations as above.
But as before, the ability to save a smaller number of essential files, such as for work, study, creative projects, and similar, can be invaluable. Cobian Drive is something you install and setup on your PC for local use, which means that your saved files and folders are saved elsewhere on your machine, such as a second hard drive specifically for backups, or an external hard drive for the same purpose.
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