Any backup program worth its salt allows you to schedule backups. Scheduling: If you’re going to back up effectively, you need to do it on a regular basis. Some will also create a restore partition on your hard drive, which can be used instead if the hard drive is still operational. Any backup program should be able to create a bootable optical disc or USB thumb drive. Imaging is the most convenient to restore in case of a system crash, and also ensures you don’t miss anything important.īoot media: Should your system crash completely, you need an alternate way to boot and run the recovery software. Image backup/imaging: Images are byte-for-byte snapshots of your entire hard drive (normally without the empty sectors) or partition, and can be used to restore both the operating system and data. Some programs automatically select the appropriate files if you use the Windows library folders (Documents, Photos, Videos, etc.). Seagate, WD, and others provide backup utilities that are adequate for the average user.įile backup: If you want to back up only your data (operating systems and programs can be reinstalled, though it’s mildly time- and effort-consuming), a program that backs up just the files you select is a major time-saver. Additionally, if you intend to back up to a newly purchased external hard drive, check out the software that ships with it.

Features you don’t need add complexity and may slow down your system. How to pick a backup softwareĪs with most things-don’t over-buy. We also test the USB boot drives created by the programs. We then mount the images and test their integrity via the program’s restore functions. This is largely to test reliability and hardware compatibility, but we time two: an approximately 115GB system image (two partitions), and a roughly 50GB image created from a set of smaller files and folders. We run each program through the various types of backups it’s capable of. ShadowProtect is a bit pricey, but it is an extremely reliable backup software with foolproof continuous data protection.Īrcserve ShadowProtect SPX Desktop review How we test It is also an excellent choice not just for Windows users, but also Linux users or those in mixed Windows/Linux environments. It comes loaded with a full feature-set that allows you to quickly and easily restore your data and it has support for third-party virtual hard drives.

If you are looking for something more robust than just file and folder backup for your business, then Arcserve ShadowProtect SPX has you covered.

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