Home
Search
Basics
Windows Tips
Applications
Customize
About
Backup is essential and you should have a backup solution in place. If, however, you do not, this guide is for you. This guide covers the top five free backup programs available, for Windows, to help protect your data.
Please note: Use of these solutions is not mutually exclusive–for example: you can use Ashampoo Burning Studio to back up your data locally and Mozy to back up your data online.
EASEUS Todo Backup
Todo Backup is simple: it backs up your data, restores it when you need it, and takes system images to help you recover from a system crash. Todo Backup comes equipped with a backup wizard, which sets up your backups with ease. When you start the wizard, just select the drive, which has the data you want to back up:
More Information & Download EASEUS Todo Backup
Mozy Online Backup
By far my favorite solution for online backup is Mozy. Mozy offers free online storage (up to 2GB with paid options too.) I’ve had Mozy installed on my laptop for over two years and it has saved me on more than a handful of occasions.
Setup is simple and after downloading Mozy, you can specify what you want to back up and when. Mozy will automate your backups and let you decide when it backs up (specific times), what causes it to back up (low CPU usage), and how often (one, two, three etc. times a day.)
I just let Mozy run and it alerts me after a successful backup:
More Information & Download Mozy Online Backup
GFI Backup
GFI Backup doesn’t do much that Windows Backup can’t do; however, the interface is very simple and user-friendly and the tool works well every time — with little hassle.
More Information & Download GFI Backup
Ashampoo Burning Studio Free
More Information & Download Ashampoo Burning Studio Free
Windows Backup
Windows comes with a Backup and Restore tool that lets you back up your files to your hard drive, another hard drive, a USB thumb drive, CD, DVD, and across a network.
To back up your data:
1. Click the Start button, type Backup and click Backup and Restore.
2. Click Set up backup.
Follow this guide on Windows Backup (written for backing up over a network, but the steps are similar for all types of media.)
There you have it: my take on the best free backup solutions for Windows. What did I miss? Let us know in the comments.
About Rich
Rich is the owner and creator of Windows Guides; he spends his time breaking things on his PC so he can write how-to guides to fix them.
- Web
- |
- |
- |
- |
- Google+
- |
- More Posts (1019)
What about Macrium Reflect? I have tried several of the ones in your list and it much better for my needs. It creates an image backup that can be mount as a vitual drive. Individual files can be easily restored.
Great suggestion. I've used Macrium before but can't remember if you need to purchase a license to restore files?
I have Windows 7 Home Premium. Unfortunate the backup provided with this version of Windows does not allow network backups. I spent some time trying the free backup software and I also like Macrium Reflect. A recovery disk was created and I was able to successfully perform a full restore.
Good to know. Thanks for letting us know. Another good program for network backup is Titan Backup. You can get a free license here.
The answer to the question about Macrium Reflect is no, restores are free. The same utility does both backup and restore. I have been using it for the last year. Of the five programs you listed, I have only run Windows 7 backup, which is quite adequate normally, but a bit slow. For creating a simple partition to backup file with compression, though, Macrium Reflect is superior. For example, it is taking Windows Backup about 8 hours to backup up my hard drive to a system image plus user data onto an external 2TB Seagate. The main drive currently has 200GB of used space out of 1TB. Macrium Reflect does that in 30 minutes. They claim that their product is the fastest available. I can believe it.
I am currently using three different utilities to make backups. Since it is a bit hard to prove a system image backup without an extra system lying around to restore it onto, I do so many for safety. Twice in my 40 year career, I have relied on a backup utility only to find that its backup would not restore, for different reasons. Call me paranoid, if you like, but I now feel much safer. Besides, they all run automatically and my 2TB external drive can take the load.
I have proved the restorability of Macrium Reflect backups twice, which gives me a high comfort level. You can get it at http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp.
Edward, thank you for taking time to clarify this.
Good post! Sounds pretty interesting thou, I already use safecopybackup which has done no harm to me so far. I love their 5GB free unlimited storage. With it i have shared files with friends and the upload speed is suberb.
Thanks. I'll have to check this one out.
This is first time I had a chance of what you were saying all along whenever I open microsoft and glad I did.
It is exellent info. and knowledge for people like me. I am a professional Marketing and Management consultant and have been in this field for the last 35 years I mean when Microsoft software came into the market.
You guys are great.Thanks
SR