Even still, it's a useful keep to keep the most essential files safe. What makes OneDrive potentially ideal is if you also have a subscription to Office , as that entitles you a huge 1TB of cloud storage.
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. An image is an exact copy of an entire drive or partition, including all installed programs and system files. If you need to reinstall Windows, you can boot from the image file and avoid having to reinstall all your programs and reconfigure your Windows settings. Note that you can't use an image to restore your system on a different PC.
Images are very large and take a long time to create, so you won't want to make one every day. For everyday backups, you'll only want to copy the most important data on your PC — your documents, photos and music, for example. There are several types of regular backup:. Each differential backup will be larger than the last, but to restore your system you'll only need the full backup and the latest differential one. Incremental backup files are smaller, but to restore your system you'll need your full backup as well as all subsequent incremental ones, which takes longer.
Sofia is a tech journalist who's been writing about software, hardware and the web for nearly 20 years — but still looks as youthful as ever! After years writing for magazines, her life moved online and remains fuelled by technology, music and nature. Having written for websites and magazine since , producing a wide range of reviews, guides, tutorials, brochures, newsletters and more, she continues to write for diverse audiences, from computing newbies to advanced users and business clients.
Always willing to try something new, she loves sharing new discoveries with others. Sofia lives and breathes Windows, Android, iOS, macOS and just about anything with a power button, but her particular areas of interest include security, tweaking and privacy. North America. The best free backup software makes it simple and easy to protect and save your files, folders, and even your whole hard drive, without costing anything.
View Deal. Reasons to avoid - Some features are paywalled. The easiest way to back up your system — just set and forget. Reasons to avoid - No support for cloud storage. Reasons to avoid - No encryption - No incremental backups. Google Drive. Reasons to avoid - Not suitable for full system backups - Limited customization options. 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.
The software is a little old but it's still useful and worth considering for a free and quick fix. Backup4all is the paid version of the free Backup solution, this time adding more advanced features and a wizard for easily setting up your back up options. The software is relatively inexpensive, and there's a day free trial to allow you to test it out.
As well as support for local and external hard drives, it can also save to a USB stick or to a designated cloud service. North America. The best backup software helps you reliably backup your saved files and folders, as well as provide advanced options to better manage your saved data. View Deal. Acronis True Image. Reasons to avoid - Increases boot time. Reasons to avoid - No bundled cloud storage. Genie9 Timeline. 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 worth its salt allows you to schedule backups. Any backup program you use should allow you to retain several previous backups, or with file backup, previous versions of the file. The better software will retain and cull older backups according to criteria you establish.
Optical support: Every backup program supports hard drives, but as obsolescent as they may seem, DVDs and Blu-Ray discs are great archive media. Online support: An offsite copy of your data is a hedge against physical disasters such as flood, fire, and power surges. Online storage services are a great way to maintain an offsite copy of your data. 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.
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