Top 10 Best Backup and Recovery Tools for Windows
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IDrive
Backup and restore data, as well as schedule automated tasks to occur at a preferred time intervals with this user-friendly and practical tool.
IDrive is a professional software application whose purpose is to help you back up your important data, so you can easily restore it in case it gets lost.
The program stores your data using an online storage device and offers you 5 GB of free storage. You are only required to create an account on the official website of the utility.
Straightforward looks
Although it comes packed with a bunch of useful functions for helping you back up your data, the interface is clean and intuitive. There are four main operations, namely Backup, Restore, Scheduler, and Log that can be handled from different panels.
Backup and restoring operations
When run for the first time, most commonly backed up data, which includes “Desktop,” “Documents,” “Pictures,” “Videos,” and “Music” folders are pre-selected. Plus, you are offered quick access to the files and folders stored in your computer, so you can easily pick the items that you want to back up.
A great feature bundled in this tool is a smart system that creates your initial transfer as a full backup, while subsequent backups are incremental with only modified portions of the files being transferred. It may take some time to accomplish a full backup session but this pretty much depends on the total size of your data.
Another powerful function bundled in IDrive gives you the possibility to back up files and documents with different versions, and each backup creates a new backup set identified by a particular date and time. Plus, the tool maintains up to 30 previous versions of all the files in your account and historical versions are stored-free, while only the current version in computed in your storage.
What’s more, you can backup information from connected network drives and easily restore the files and folders from your iDrive account.
Built-in scheduler and other advanced options
The utility offers support for automatic backup operations which enable you to set the backup start time, configure the flexible timetable (daily or hourly actions), send email notifications, and show popup messages.
There are also several powerful parameters that help you locate any file or folder present in your IDrive account using the search function, share your files and folders via email, Facebook, or Twitter, as well as remove unwanted data and easily recover it from the Trash folder within 30 days.
The Archive Cleanup feature enables you to permanently delete data which no longer exists in your computer in order to free up some space in your account, while the Log section provides detailed information about the backup, restoring, deletion or other tasks performed in your account.
Preferences
IDrive is able to automatically recognize the changes to files present in your backup and save them in real-time, and lets you back up some files when they are in use (e.g. Outlook files, QuickBooks, Quicken, ACT, MS-Money), create exclusion lists, configure proxy settings, create encrypted backups, and set the Internet bandwidth.
An overall reliable tool
All in all, IDrive proves to be a user-friendly and powerful application that offers support for a fully-featured pack of tools for helping you automatically back up, restore, and share your data.
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O&O DiskImage Server Edition
Protect your private or professional data and ensure that no files are lost when disaster strikes, all with the help of this powerful program.
Keeping critical data safe can be done in a very simple and intuitive manner on any computer with the right tools, and O&O DiskImage Server Edition is one of the applications that can help users in this regard.
Designed specifically for use within corporate environments, the software allows users to backup all of the desired files and to keep them safe from any computer failure or disaster.
An intuitive set of tools
The program comes with a series of easy-to-use utilities meant to allow users to backup entire partitions of particular files from their PCs, as well as to restore previous versions of their data, all from a straightforward interface.
Users can take advantage of this application when looking to save files or partitions to new, safer locations and can also set it up to replace files in a backup with their newly created versions (the tool can create both incremental and differential images).
Multiple drive imaging options
When creating images of their drives, users can choose between three different methods, namely Used sector, Forensic, and Direct Forensic. Moreover, they can elect to compress the image to save space and can also protect their data by attaching a password to the newly created image.
The software allows users to exclude individual files from the image and can also lock drives when creating an image. Moreover, it can be set to skip bad sectors and to identify unmodified data when performing incremental imaging operations.
Clone drives and schedule backups
Users can take advantage of O&O DiskImage Server Edition when it comes to cloning entire disks, as well as when they want to automatically backup their data. Thus, they can schedule backup jobs to be performed at certain periods of time, which ensures increased safety for their data.
In conclusion, O&O DiskImage Server Edition is a powerful program for backing up user data. The tool can create images of entire partitions, can clone disks, and can also keep particular files backed up and in sync.
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Syncovery
Backup data and synchronize PCs, servers and notebooks by creating customize profiles using this straightforward software utility.
Syncovery provides you with an intuitive application designed to backup your important files and folders as well as perform synchronization between different devices. With its enhanced speed, real-time sync capabilities and scheduling tools, it can ensure that your data is safe at any time.
Includes an easy to navigate interface
Ease of use is one of the application's advantages and the interface makes no exception. Furthermore, the 'Wizard Mode' can guide beginner users through all the necessary steps of running a backup or sync job, while the 'Advanced Mode' is designed for professional users.
You can create multiple backup profiles, configure and work with them separately. There are multiple synchronization modes. Selecting the 'Standard Copying' method means that Syncovery only performs copying operations, without deleting any files.
The 'SmartTracking' mode can be used for running two-way synchronizations, while the 'Extract Mirror' mode creates an exact copy of the source folder.
Allows you to schedule and run multiple tasks
Syncovery comes with scheduling capabilities, enabling you to run data backup and synchronization at convenient times, upon shutdown or log-off. The scheduler can launch multiple tasks simultaneously and can also run as a service. During the backup or sync process, moved files are automatically detected and the 'Volume Shadow Service' is used for copying locked files (used by other applications), without affecting file integrity.
File versioning allows you to store older versions of a file within the backup, while the 'Block Level Copying' feature enables you to perform differential and incremental backups, in order to speed up the process.
Syncovery features file compression and encryption and enables you to set the maximum number of simultaneous jobs and profiles per process, the maximum memory amount to use, as well as modify the thread priority and set speed limits. The restore wizard can help you decrypt backups and retrieve files.
FTP, SSH, WebDAV, SSL, Amazon S3, Azure, Google Docs and HTTP support, obsolete files management options, action logging, real-time and e-mail notifications are other advantages that this application comes with.
An excellent tool for data synchronization and backup
To conclude with, Syncovery comes with a complete set of tools for backing up files and folders quickly and securely, as well as perform data synchronizations between computers, servers and online storage applications.
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Download Hubs
Syncovery is part of these download collections: Synchronize Folders
SyncBackPro
Clear-cut and modern-looking application which enables you to easily backup, synchronize and create mirrors for files and directories.
Creating regular backups of your files and folders is one of the safest ways to ensure your data does not get lost by accident, a malware infection or a hardware crash.
SyncBackPro is one of the apps that can help you not only make backups, but also sync folders or mirror them.
Neatly organized GUI
The main window of the utility displays numerous details about the tasks you have previously created, such as profile name, type, date when it was last run, left and right folders.
When you create a new task, you need to specify the action you are interested in: backup, synchronization or mirroring, depending on your necessities.
Supports numerous locations
When using SyncBackPro, you can backup or sync folders that are not necessarily located on your local hard drive. For example, you can synchronize directories stored on an external drive, network path, FTP server or even email messages.
You can also backup files stored in various online accounts, such as Amazon S3, Dropbox, Backblaze, Box, Google Drive, Google Photos, Microsoft Azure, OneDrive, SharePoint, SugarSync, and WebDav.
Customize the backup tasks
SyncBackPro offers you the possibility to personalize a flurry of settings related to the backup, sync or mirroring processes, to ensure the suit your needs. You can set up a schedule, so the operation starts daily, weekly, monthly, or according to a custom timetable.
Moreover, you can assign a hotkey that helps you quickly run a profile, regardless of the other program you might probably be running.
Conclusion
All in all, SyncBackPro packs a wide range of parameters you can personalize just as you like. You can enable encryption, versioning, notifications or integrity checks to ensure the data you need is always saved and kept safe. Similarly, the destination folder can also be located in any of these locations.
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O&O DiskImage Professional
Insure the safety of your digital data by using this utility for creating images from complete systems or individual drives for various recovery scenarios.
O&O DiskImage Professional is an advanced program whose purpose is to help you back up and restore files, folders, or entire partitions by creating data images. It provides support for complete, incremental and differential images, as well as Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) format conversion.
User interface
The tool comes bundled with various dedicated parameters but the GUI doesn’t look overcrowded at all. You are actually welcomed by a clean feature lineup that gives rookies the possibility to make use of the Start page in order to create an image of partition, drives, or entire computer.
Recovery utilities
O&O DiskImage Professional gives you the freedom to carry out several recovery operations in case your system crashes down, namely build up an image (of partition, drives or entire computer), back up files and folders, generate an incremental or differential image, as well as restore data.
Creating a drive image
The program lists all partitions detected on your system and lets you view additional information about each one, namely size, sectors per cluster, file system, free space, and drive letter.
Plus, you are allowed to add comments to the image, validate the image when completed, convert it to VHD file format at the end of the task, play sound notifications, as well as shut down or restart the computer when the process comes to an end.
Imaging options
There’s support for preset profiles that you can choose from, such as Archive or Multimedia, in case you work with drives containing a large number of compressed files or music and clips.
If the preset modes don’t cover your needs, you can manually create a new one by selecting the method for building complete images, creating VHD image files, compressing the image file to save storage space (LZNT or BZIP2) or splitting it into smaller parts, and encrypting it using the AES-128, AES-192 or AES-256 algorithm.
Extra features to play with
O&O DiskImage Professional enables you to schedule tasks, clone drives, view information for DiskImage file backups (OBK), images (OMG) and virtual hard disks (VHD), verify image files for any errors, burn an image file to disk, create or burn an ISO file, and delete rewritable discs.
Last but not least, you can mount drives from images, and ISO files as drives, remove mounted drives, merge incremental images, convert image files between OMG and VHD formats, create a bootable disk, edit PC properties (e.g. name, SID), map network drives, as well as check drives for errors.
An overall excellent drive backup and recovery app
All in all, O&O DiskImage Professional proves to be a reliable program that bundles a rich suite of configuration settings, which is suitable especially for power users.
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SyncBack Touch
Runs as a Windows service to allow SyncBackPro or SyncBackSE to access a remote computer and use it as a backup source or destination.
SyncBack Touch is a Windows service that works alongside SyncBackPro or SyncBackSE to allow remote backups and data synchronization. In other words, it enables you to connect to a remote computer and use it as a backup source or destination.
A Windows service to allow remote access for SyncBackPro and SyncBackSE
You must deploy SyncBack Touch on the computer that you want to access remotely. On the other hand, SyncBackPro or SyncBackSE must be installed on the workstation you want to manage backup profiles from. Please note that no other edition of SyncBack supports the Touch service.
As SyncBack Touch is a Windows service, it does not feature a standard interface or a configuration window. However, if the service is running, SyncBackPro and SyncBackSE will be able to establish remote connections, and not necessarily in the same network.
Use SyncBack Touch as a source or a destination file to setup a remote connection
To use the remote access service, you must create a new profile in SyncBackPro or SyncBackSE. No matter whether you want to perform backups, data copying or synchronization, SyncBack Touch can be chosen as a source or a destination during profile setup.
If the target PC is on the same network, your SyncBack app should be able to automatically detect its presence and fill in the hostname and the port number. Otherwise, you will have to fill this information yourself.
If you activated the impersonation feature during the installation of SyncBack Touch, then the Windows credentials of the remote PC will also be required.
Backup and sync data on remote Windows PCs, MacOS, and Android
Thanks to SyncBack Touch, the two editions of SyncBack mentioned above get an additional feature: remote backup and synchronization. Furthermore, SyncBack Touch is also available for MacOS and Android, which means you will be able to backup your phone's data on a Windows PC.
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Backup4all Lite
Create data backups and save them to local, external or removable drives, as well as network locations, with this intuitive piece of software.
It is always a good idea to backup your important files, as there is always the danger of them being corrupted, for various reasons. However, many of the applications that can help you perform this task are rather difficult to use, which may discourage novices from giving them a try.
Backup4all Lite is an intuitive program, designed to help inexperienced users protect important data, without having to customize numerous advanced settings. It offers a simple wizard mode that guides you through the backup process, by having you follow a few straightforward steps.
Features built-in backup and restore wizards
When adding a new backup job, you have the option of launching the application's wizard mode. You can select the local or network location you want to save your files to, then add the necessary documents.
Backup4all Lite allows you to exclude various files or folders, to avoid creating backups of unnecessary items.
Additionally, the saved files can be compressed and encrypted, to prevent unauthorized users from accessing them without permission.
Schedule tasks
It is possible to schedule backup, test, repair and restore operations, enabling you to execute them at specific intervals or when you do not have access to your computer.
These can be performed daily, weekly, monthly, at user logon or after the computer has been idle for a certain period of time. The application can automatically wake the computer to run a specific task.
Manage multiple backup jobs
Backup4all Lite allows you to set up multiple operations and save them for future use. These can have tags assigned to them, enabling you to easily differentiate between jobs.
You can also inspect the contents of a created backup in a tree-like structure, by accessing a side panel. This allows you to get an idea of how various files have changed since the last operation.
All in all, this is a useful and intuitive application can can help you protect important data by creating secure backups. It is easy-to-use, as it offers simplified wizard modes for various operations.
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SyncBackSE
Backup and synchronize files and folders from your hard drive to another one, a FTP server, a ZIP archive, a network location, or removable media.
SyncBackSE is a software application that provides users with a simple means of creating and running multiple backup and sync jobs, with the help of a wizard.
Seamless setup and minimal interface
The installation process does not last very long and it does not offer you to add any third-party products, while the interface you are met with encompasses a simple and clear-cut design. It is comprised of a menu bar, a few buttons and a pane in which to view created jobs. Moreover, extensive Help contents are supported and a built-in wizard will guide you every step of the way.
As a result, it becomes quite clear that all user types, including those with little or no previous experience, can learn how to handle it properly.
Types of tasks you can devise
It is possible to create multiple backup, synchronize and mirror profiles, by simply following the steps provided. The first type of process enables you to create a copy of specified items to the same drive, an FTP server, a removable device, Network connection or ZIP archive.
The second one allows you to copy files in both directions, while also keeping a history of the file’s whereabouts during the last sync, thus giving you more control over what actions to take. The latter process lets you copy items from one location to another, and removes all files that only exist in the destination directory.
Easily manage profiles
It is possible to run several tasks concomitantly, as well as pause and resume them at a later date, just in case you have to close the computer for any reason or leave. Furthermore, you can create schedules, view logs and import profiles using SPS file extensions.
Bottom line
To conclude, SyncBackSE is a very efficient and reliable piece of software which helps you prevent sudden data loss. All jobs are completed in a timely manner, the interface is suitable to all users, it does not put a strain on the system’s performance and we did not come across any errors, crashes or bugs in our tests.
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Icedrive
Back up and access your files from wherever with this cloud solution, capable of acting as if it were a physical drive on your computer.
Over the last decade, the emergence of cloud services has changed the way people back up their data. The popularity of such a solution was not at all surprising: knowing your files and documents are safe is one thing, but being able to access them from anywhere is entirely another. PC software, web app, as well as mobile phone compatibility — it's all so convenient with the tools at your disposal.
As one can expect, cloud solutions have been getting more and more varied. You can pick and choose from many different providers, and perhaps Icedrive's take may just entice you: the same convenience, bundled with the ability to access your data as if it were on a physical drive.
Mount the cloud
The main feature of Icedrive is that it can integrate seamlessly with your machine, syncing your data and making it appear as physical storage. Backing up and restoring are done that way. After "mounting" the software, a new drive will appear in your system, allowing you to drag and drop the files you want to have at the ready.
This functionality is very convenient and practical. By having your cloud storage act as a physical drive, you'll be able to preserve your important documents, images, and folders more often, as well as access them as though they were on your hard drive.
Syncable and portable
Icedrive provides you with the possibility of syncing certain folders you periodically want to back up. You'll first have to designate it through the "New sync pair" — and then the whole process will be automated.
For those who need it, this software also has a portable version. Though the mounting drive feature is only available in the installable version, the cloud functionality is still easy to access. A web and mobile app are also available, so that you can view and retrieve the things you need, when you need them.
In conclusion, Icedrive is a solid app. Though the market is very competitive, the options this software provides are worth exploring.
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SyncBackFree
Fast backup and synchronization utility that enables you to create copies of your folders and files on external hard drives, discs, FTP servers, and shared drives.
SyncBack is an easy to use application designed to help you set and perform backup and synchronization jobs.
When running SyncBack for the first time, you have to setup a customized profile. Although this can take time, the available options cover a wide range of situations that may occur when performing a backup or synchronizing two directories. Besides, you have the possibility to schedule jobs, so you don't need to configure another profile every time.
The first step is to choose the source and destination folders, as well as the job type. The program can be used with files and folders on your hard drive, CDs, DVDs or USB drives. Furthermore, the destination directory can be on a FTP server, as well as on a network computer.
If you are a beginner, you can use the 'Easy' mode, while the 'Expert' mode is destined for professionals. But no matter what you choose, the program provides you with multiple options to customize your sync / backup profile.
For example, you have to choose the desired action in different situations, such as when a file can be found only in the destination folder. There are some features that are only available for experts, such as customizing the comparing attributes for the sync jobs or setting which programs should be closed / started before and after performing the job.
In addition to this, the program offers you the possibility to easily filter the copied files and folders. In order to save space when doing a backup, the files can be compressed into an archive.
Also, you can optionally choose to be prompted for file deletions, as well as verify that the files are copied correctly. To make sure that the computer performed the selected job, you can receive the log file on your email address.
One interesting feature of the application is that it offers you the possibility to simulate a job, meaning that no file is really copied, but a report is generated.
SyncBack combines the ease of use with a multitude of features for expert users. It is a handy and highly-customizable utility that allows you to easily backup files or synchronize folders.
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Download Hubs
SyncBackFree is part of these download collections: Create Backup, Make Backup
