Update! After further (almost!) exhaustive testing comes round 2 of this review. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find one single piece of software that covers the minimum requirements listed below – with the cavet that this review is aimed toward home users – not corporate environments. If you have several thousand to spend on a backup solution, there are plenty of options, but for now, home users will still have to compromise.
This review covers both commercial and free software – pitting them head to head!
Based upon my experience this article is not a statement of fact – all these products have good and bad points – but I hope it will help you evaluate the best. If you need help on creating a backup look here, or if you prefer someone come to your house, fit and configure a backup system for you – I’m always available! 🙂
Caveats
- All testing done in a Windows environment – sorry chaps no Linux / Mac facilities as yet.
- This is not a review of: Disk Imaging, Synchronisation, Online, Real Time or Continuous Data Protection products – these are very different forms of backup, and can not generally be relied upon to cover all the points above.
- The products are aimed at home users and therefore do not normally require sophisticated cataloging and business enterprise class features – and should not be difficult to understand.
- You have largish amounts of data to be backed up – if you only have a single gigabyte or so, online or synchronisation backup would probably be fine. Please be aware that ‘synchronisation’ is NOT backup.
- Writing to DVD or CD is not required: this review is for people who have reasonably large amounts of data to backup – burning 25 DVDs every few months is no longer an option.
Now that’s all out-of-the-way, let’s get down to business.
The shortlist
- Genie Backup Manager Professional
- Cobian Backup
- Acronis TrueImage Home 2011
- Novabackup Professional
- Easeus ToDo Backup
- GFI Backup
- Areca
- Fbackup
- Backup4All
- Comodo Backup
- Crashplan
Minimum Requirements
- Must be able to run completly automatically – without user intervention.
- Supports backup to disk no matter how it is connected: USB, eSata, network etc.
- Robust verification of backup – it must be able to check the validity of the backup.
- Supports very large volumes of data. (Typically larger than 100 GB).
- Supports data compression.
- Full and Incremental backup types.
- Handles missed backups – e.g. the PC is switched off during a scheduled backup.
- Handles unavailable backup destinations – i.e. you have a laptop that is not connected to your backup USB disk while you are out – then when it is reconnected, the backup starts automatically and seamlessly.
- Be actively maintained.
- *Can import and export the configuration of the backup software settings.* This is not really critical – but a very useful time-saving feature for any piece of complex software.
I reckon this criteria to be the absolute minimum requirement for any backup software – whether it is free or commercially based. Your requirements may differ, but after decades of experience, and user feedback, almost everyone will require the features on this list and to omit one or two will be your downfall.
Axed!
I’ll kick off by immediately (and completely unfairly) dismissing Novabackup, Crashplan and Comodo Backup as these utilise proprietary file formats. In other words, you have no access to your data if you can not install and run these programs to recover. That said, almost the entire business world uses proprietary backup formats – so if you are comfortable with this, these are very good products – even better, Comodo is free, and Crashplan offers a free & paid for service.
Easeus ToDo Backup is also straight out of the window, because it’s really a disk imaging program, which has some ‘backup facilities’.
Fbackup is also flushed straight down th chute, as it can not do an incremental backup…..
However woefully irresponsible it is to do, Areca is also chucked on the bonfire, which is a real shame as it is a very competent product – but it is too difficult to understand for the non techie. For the techies out there, Areca has some very compelling technology: it’s fully transactional and also supports delta backup – it’s the only here that does – and that is no small achievement.
Finalists
Crikey, we’re now down to the hardcore already!
Straight away I can say that all the final products will perform all the criteria above, in one way or another. Of the commercial products Genie Backup Manager Pro, Acronis TrueImage and Backup4All are all very good – Acronis is the odd one out, as it is not a traditional backup program, in that it offers disk imaging as well.
The user interfaces are all good, with the cleanest layout going to Backup4All, which, alongside Genie Backup Manager would be my pick of the ‘paid for’ solutions.
Recommendations
However, GFI Backup and Cobian Backup are offered to you for free!
They are both exceptional products in their own right, but to offer these solutions for free, with all the complexity that it entails, is simply outstanding. Cobian Backup – in particular – offers such a well thought out product, that I would have to highly recommend it – and suggest you get your credit card out and donate at least £20 – as it’s easily worth more. Small criticism has been made of the fact that Cobian does not have a ‘restore’ feature – I would argue this is really not necessary: With all backups, you create a backup and name it – say “My Photos”. When you need to recover, just navigate to the folder that contains the ‘My Photos’ backups and open the latest zip archive with any zip tool. From here on, it’s drag and drop complexity to restore files! Note: if you don’t know where you are saving your backups, none of these products will help you. 🙂
So it’s ‘hats off’ to Cobian Backup for an exemplary product.
(In the interests of openness and transparency, I have to stress that I am not affiliated with any of these companies in any way, and do not receive any compensation for writing this review.)