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31 Best Free Backup Software Tools (August ) - Does Windows 10 have a backup utility? |
9 Best Windows Backup Software for [Free and Paid] - Reviews of the best free backup software for Windows
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Should you prefer a simpler life though, without all the configuration choices that the powerful desktop client has to offer or the various online adventures, then the new iDrive Basic is a stripped down interface that helps you set up backup schedules, restore previous versions, and share files with friends all with only a few clicks. Just as with all Cloud backups, IDrive is suitable for those with high-speed unlimited bandwidth broadband, and those with capped connections should probably avoid it.
IDrive does offer an Express service where backups can be made on storage drives that IDrive ships out to you and returned. Get iDrive here. Where you used to be able to buy it separately at a reduced price, Paragon now forces you to buy HDM Advanced whether you want its extra features or not. But, if you will take advantage of things like moving and resizing disk partitions and securely wiping data from drives then it could work out better value than other packages. The interface is clear and easy to understand, with step-by-step assistance for the various backup tasks you require on the schedule you set.
The combination of defined scenario and ad-hoc backups is a very flexible one that fits well with those who use their computers in an especially dynamic way, who therefore need their software to be equally adaptable. And these backups can be mounted by virtual machines if you wish to investigate their contents quickly. The difference with this solution is that it is triggered by the insertion of the backup media i.
There is also a real-time mode that tracks changes to files in the highlighted folders and then copies them to the backup location. For someone who captures data each day and wants to secure it at the end of their working day, the AutoBackup method works well.
There are no file too big to backup, and your subscription gives you unlimited cloud storage. But it does copy away any documents, images, videos or other file types that are on your system, plus it works with Windows, macOS, as well as Android, iOS and iPad OS.
You can get a full refund on that if you send it back afterwards. Windows users are fortunate to have a number of excellent backup options available to choose from. R-Drive Image has always been a favorite of ours—a low-resource-consuming product that was ultra-reliable in creating backup images of partitions and disks.
That has changed with this latest version, which now has a more modern, user-friendly interface and more versatility in the types of backups you can perform. The latest version It even adds an interesting pre-backup file scanning to root out anomalies before overwriting your previous backup—a nod to the emergence of ransomware as a concern.
Among the free programs we tested, Backupper Standard wins primarily because it has the most features, including imaging, file backup, disk cloning, and plain file syncing, plus multiple scheduling options. This was the case with Backupper 4, and the latest version has only added more options, making it a surprisingly well-rounded free offering. We hit a few performance snags with less-conventional system setups, but for the average user, it should perform as expected. 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. Its performance is up to the mark and email support satisfactory.
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is an old player in the backup game. It started as a disk imaging program — but now is the best all-in-one backup suite and comes loaded with several advanced features, like ransomware protection.
It tells you what the software can do and how to use it. The user interface is clean and intuitive, featuring seven large tabs in the left panel that cover all the primary features and settings. The best thing about Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is that it backs up your entire drive on the cloud but not an external or a locally networked drive. It is also a complete Windows backup solution in the true sense, letting you make backups on the local drive, an external disk, and on the cloud.
It also offers more backup-scheduling options than most other tools, including a unique option called Upon Event. You can use it to create backups at special instances, like when you connect an external hard drive. Another feature unique to Acronis is ransomware protection, which monitors your data for unusual file modifications.
Unlike Backblaze, this data backup software also offers Facebook and Instagram backups so that you never lose that content.
With Acronis, you can even remotely manage and modify your system using a mobile device. Cool, eh? It has also got you covered if you want the added protection of a private encryption key. In case a problem occurs, you can quickly roll back to your previous state. The only downside is that the basic one-year plan offers GB free cloud storage, which may not be enough in the long run if you have an extensive collection of videos and photos.
Registered users enjoy access to hour technical support via phone. Its performance was equally impressive during restoration, downloading 1 GB of video and photo files in nine minutes. If you like it, you can purchase any of these three plans:. Based in California, IDrive has been in the backup business since While its cloud backup plan for personal users is not the cheapest or most featured, it hits high marks across all important categories — pricing, advanced backup features, and performance.
I was able to install the software in a jiffy, and the user interface is simple yet effective. There are six buttons in the left pane, which between themselves cover all the primary functions and features. IDrive has you covered. It lets you backup as many computers as you like, including external or locally networked drives.
However, you may want to go a little easy on it because the space offered is limited 2 TB in the Personal plan. Like most cloud backup programs, IDrive backs up only user files — not system or application files. IDrive offers a courier service, IDrive Express, which lets you request a physical hard drive to perform an initial backup. Once you return the drive, the company will upload your files to its cloud servers. You can create one such backup a year for free.
Additionally, IDrive allows you to use this service once a year for free to restore large amounts of files from an existing backup. Simply attach an external drive and click the Disk Image Backup button. Unlike most file backup software, it supports endless versioning, keeping up to 10 older versions of deleted or updated files forever. However, unlike Acronis and Backblaze, IDrive makes continuous backups.
But the good part is that it does offer some advanced features, like File Syncing. You can sync selected files across different computers with a single click. Another useful but somewhat limited feature is File Sharing, which allows you to share files with other IDrive users.
Like Backblaze and Acronis, IDrive encrypts data at the client site but also supports a private encryption key. You can choose to use the default encryption or add private encryption when you set up your IDrive account. IDrive is not only suitable for personal users — but also tailor-made for small businesses. IDrive is compatible with Windows 10, 8. Among Windows servers, it supports Windows Server , , IDrive uploaded data faster than other cloud backup solutions for Windows I tested.
It took 1 hr and 28 mins to complete my initial upload of 16 GB files. However, its download speed is nothing to rave about. IDrive offers a free basic plan — but it can work as an online-syncing solution at best since you get only 5 GB space.
It is reasonably-priced, puts in a good performance, offers technical support via phone, and provides some advanced features like file syncing. Backblaze is one of the top names in the cloud backup niche. While there are many who offer better sets of features, few make backups as convenient and cost-effective as Backblaze. Backblaze offers unlimited cloud storage, which is truly awesome.
Backblaze takes the worry of scheduling backups off your shoulders by backing up non-stop by default. Backblaze uses AES encryption to keep your data safe, but you can add a private encryption key for extra security. But remember — you lose the key, you lose the data forever. The restoration process is simple and handled through a web interface. You will have to bear the return shipping cost if you opt to receive your files via mail — provided you return the USB flash drive or USB drive within 30 days and make no more than five requests a year.
However, you can contact its team via email or chat. Backblaze uploads files at a good speed. It uploaded 16 GB of photos, music, videos, and documents in about 2 hours 38 minutes. I was also happy with its download speed. It took me about 9 minutes to restore 1 GB of video and photo files. You can check out a more detailed Backblaze review in our backup software reviews section. Its pricing is uncomplicated — and unlike most competitors, it offers monthly subscriptions.
Backblaze is the best set-it-forget-it backup solution. The fact that it is extremely cost-effective and offers unlimited cloud storage helps too. This program is text-based, so you won't find regular menu options or buttons.
You can compress a backup image, split it into custom sizes, and even check a hard drive for errors using a free hard drive testing tool before creating an image. Restoring a backup with CloneZilla Live involves taking the regular backup process steps but doing so in reverse.
It sounds confusing, but following the on-screen instructions makes it pretty easy. Karen's Replicator is easy to use, simple folder backup utility that supports a local, external, or network drive as a backup destination. Data is backed up using a regular copy method without encryption or password options, which means you can browse through a backup like you would any other folder in Explorer. Options let you exclude subfolders from a backup, filter out certain files by their extension, avoid backing up particular directories, and schedule backup jobs.
You can also decide whether or not Karen's Replicator should delete files from a backup if they're removed from the source folder. The interface of Karen's Replicator is a bit outdated but it didn't interfere with backups or our ability to find settings.
Personal Backup can back up data to a folder on an external or local drive, FTP site, or network share. When selecting the files to be backed up, Personal Backup only allows single files to be added at a time. You can keep adding more, but only one can actually be chosen at a time, which can slow down the process of creating a backup job.
You can , however, select whole folders, and context menu integration is supported. A backup can be built as an archive for each and every file, creating many ZIP files, or as a single archive which contains all the data. Options are available for encryption, compression, and file types that should be excluded from compression. Personal Backup allows a total of 16 backup jobs to be created, each of which can have their own scheduling options and incremental or differential backup type.
To use Personal Backup, you must download the proper bit or bit version that matches your version of Windows. We find Personal Backup to be very cluttered, making it hard to find what you're looking for because nearly all the settings are simply thrown into the program interface with seemingly no organization.
However, it does update a lot, which is a good sign that it's constantly trying to improve. The bit version runs on Windows 11, 10, 8, and 7, as well as Windows Server R2, , , and Windows Vista and XP users can install the bit version. Incremental backups are also supported. Settings are available to compress a backup and manage how much splitting, if any, should be done to cut the backup into smaller pieces.
Restoring data is as easy as selecting the backup image and choosing the drive to restore it to. Also, the setup file is over MB, so it could take some time to finish downloading. Take note that you need to register for a free user account on their website before you can fully use the program. That, or log in via another account when you first open the program, like your Google account. There is no restore function, and everything that's on the destination disk is wiped clean before XXCLONE beings backing up the source drive's files.
You're able to adjust the speed of the backup as well as make the destination drive bootable. We tested this program in Windows 10, 8 and 7, but it should also work for Windows 11, Vista, and XP. PING is a program that runs straight off bootable media like a disc. It lets you back up one or more partitions to a file. There isn't a graphical interface when using PING, so you must be somewhat comfortable with a text-only navigation screen to use this program.
You have the option to back up partitions to a local or external drive as well as to a network share or FTP server. When selecting the correct source and destination drive for a backup or restore, it's actually a bit difficult to determine which drive is which. PING does not show you the name of the drive or the size, but instead just the first few files that are located on the disk. This is only slightly helpful when determining the right disk to select.
You can compress a backup and optionally set it up for incremental backups in the future, both of which are options you're asked before starting a backup. When restoring a backup with PING, you're required to know the exact path of the backed up files. You're unable to "browse" for the files like you can when an operating system is loaded, so you must know the exact path to the files to successfully restore them.
After logging in on the download page, choose the stand-alone ISO link. This program, nor backing up in general, has anything to do with the more commonly known computer term ping , as in the ping command. Areca Backup makes it simple to add new files to a backup job by supporting drag and drop. You can save a backup to any internal drive, FTP site, or network folder. Backing up to external hardware is not supported.
We've ranked Areca Backup this low on the list because it isn't as easy to use as most of the other programs you see here. Visit the Areca official website for tutorials and manuals. We were able to get this program to work with Windows 10, 7, and XP, but it may also work in other versions of Windows.
CopyWipe is a backup program that can run outside of Windows on a disc or from within Windows like a regular program, though both options are text-only, non-GUI versions. It backs up entire hard drives to other hard drives, supporting both internal and external devices like flash drives. You can copy hard drives even if they're different sizes by choosing to scale drives or do a raw copy so that everything is copied, both used and unused space.
You must confirm a copy before starting, which is a good thing, but CopyWipe doesn't provide any identifiable details to differentiate between the drives, which means you must use Disk Management to know which one is Hard Drive 0 , Hard Drive 1 , etc. We tested the most recent version in Windows 10, 8, and 7, and it worked just as advertised so long as the program ran as an administrator.
It should also work for Windows 11 and older versions of Windows. When you visit this site, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your device and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests.
When doing backups automatically, it means that the backup drive has to be always connected to the computer, which could be a risk as if malware infects the device, it may also damage the backup. In contrast, the system image backup feature allows you to create a full backup, but you must go through the process manually every time that you want to protect your files and installation. Typically, this feature is more suited as a temporary backup when modifying the system settings or replacing the hard drive.
One significant benefit is that unlike the automatic option, you can always disconnect the backup drive and store it in a safe location, which can protect your data from malware and hackers as well as from natural disasters. Similar to the automated process, system image backup also has a few caveats. You can only restore files since the last time you ran the feature. As a result, if you're not proactive in creating backups, you could lose a lot of data during the restore process.
Also, this feature is meant to restore your entire system, not individual files. We're focusing this guide on Windows 10, but the Backup and Restore tool has been around for a long time, which means you can refer to these instructions if you're using Windows 8.
Mauro Huculak is technical writer for WindowsCentral. His primary focus is to write comprehensive how-tos to help users get the most out of Windows 10 and its many related technologies. Windows Central Windows Central. Mauro Huculak. More about windows Windows 10 version 22H2 announced, and its first build is available fo This new interactive map shows the scale of Microsoft Azure's global c Topics Windows 10 Help.
See all comments Great post, Mauro! I have been doing this already, but there were a couple little hints about space management that I had forgotten about. Hey frett, thanks! Yup, this guide is good for those who don't know about the feature, and it's also a reminder for those who do know. Great post indeed.
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