Paragon Drive Backup 2010 is a backup solution for computers running a Microsoft Windows operating system. It is basically a lighter version of the more expensive Backup & Recovery Suite that is offered for $69.95 at the Paragon website. It is an easy to use backup software that provides everything necessary to perform data backups and restoration.

Download

We are offering the file in cooperation with Paragon via Bittorrent. Users who want to download the 32-bit or 64-bit edition of the program need a Bittorrent client to download the file. A good Bittorrent client for the task is uTorrent which can be downloaded at the developer’s website. All that needs to be done is to download one of the torrent files after installation of the Bittorrent client. A double-click on the torrent should add that torrent to the program interface and start the download immediately.

Please keep the torrent in the program for a while to seed it to other users as well. Thanks a lot!

Users with difficulty can post a comment in this article so that they can receive help downloading the files.

• Paragon Drive Backup 2010 Special Edition 32-bit
• Paragon Drive Backup 2010 Special Edition 64-bit

Installation

A double-click on the program file after the download will start the setup for the drive backup software. The setup will display the following screen that can be used to get a license for the program:

Everything else should be self explanatory.

Here is the direct link to get a serial for the software.

Paragon Drive Backup 2010 SE Review

Paragon Drive Backup makes use of the usual Paragon software interface that puts the tasks that can be done with the software in the left sidebar and the information of the active task in the main window.

The tasks are divided into Basic Backup / Restore Tasks, Advanced Backup Tasks, Tools and News and Documentation.

The basic backup and restore tasks can be used to perform a smart backup, schedule disk, partition or file backups and restore a previously created backup. Every selection will open a wizard guiding the user through the steps to perform the selected task.

• Smart Backup: Gives the user options to backup partitions, entire hard drives, files, email (Windows Mail and Outlook), documents in the MyDocuments folder or media files that are located in the same folder structure. Backups can be executed right away or scheduled.
• Schedule Backup of Disk or Partition: A faster way to schedule backups of disks and partitions of the computer system.
• Schedule File Backups: A faster way to schedule file backups.
• Restore: Ability to restore backups that have been created in the past.

File backups can be further customized by using so called include and exclude masks that make sure that certain file types or names are included or excluded from the backup. That’s very handy for operations where specific file types need to be backed up, for instance all document formats on drive C.

The advanced backup tasks offer differential partition backups and incremental file backups which can be used to reduce the size requirements of backups. Paragon Drive Backup will automatically use compression technologies to decrease the size of the backup.

The tools section finally can be used to create recovery media so that the data can be recovered even if the operating system fails to load. Most users might want to start with this option to be able to restore the backups if the OS should fail.

One interesting option provided by Paragon Drive Backup 2010 is the archive integrity checker which can verify the integrity of previously created backups.

Drive Backup can create a backup capsule on a connected hard drive that will then be used to store the backups that are performed by the software.

Other features of Paragon Drive Backup 2010 Special Edition:

• Paragon Hot Processing, Microsoft VSS Support – Ensures that all files and folders are copied even if Windows is running.
• Selective Restore – Restore only files needed
• Support for Ext3/4FS, Apple HFS+ file systems

Verdict

Paragon Drive Backup 2010 Special Edition is an easy to use backup solution for the Windows operating system. It is relatively easy to use and configure thanks to the wizards that are displayed whenever a task is created.

Christmas Giveaway

You can grab a license of the backup software by downloading the setup files via Bittorrent. The option to create a new license will be given once the setup of the backup application has started. Make sure you download the right version (32-bit or 64-bit offered).

Paragon is offering support during the giveaway at Twitter. Anyone who runs into installation or usage problems can contact them during that time to sort things out.

Raju is giving away Antamedia Print Manager licenses, check out his blog for a chance to win those.

O&O DiskImage 3 Express Edition comes with three buttons that control the backup and restoration process. Button 1 creates an image of all system partitions on the computer. The user simply selects a drive where he wants the backup to be restored and that’s it. No selection of single partitions, no options whatsoever. Pure and simple but probably to simple for tech savvy users.

The second button restores a partition. One major drawback is that the system partition cannot be restored. So all personal data on that partition is lost unless you buy the pro or enterprise version which can restore the system partition.

The question that arises is why the program does backup the system partition if it cannot be recovered? The answer to that is probably a business decision. Would a user who needs data from his system partition buy a commercial version of DiskImage? I bet he would.

The last button lets a user browse an image that was created. Each additional backup only saves the differences and not the full partition saving disk space on the (external) hard drive where the images will be stored on.

Paragon’s Drive Backup is an alternative which offers more functionality and the option to restore the system partition as well.

So what is the Drive Backup Express offering in detail? It obviously allows the user to backup to hard drive or partition if it is currently accessible in Windows XP or Windows Vista. The Drive Backup version only supports backing the data up on other drives that are connected to the computer but that should be enough for most users anyway.

The archive that is created during backup is compressed, it used roughly 17 Gigabytes to backup my 50-something Gigabyte hard drive. On the other hand that drive had a lot of free space, only 19.2 Gigabyte were filled with data.

The images that get backed up by Drive Backup Express can be restored which means it’s possible to backup partitions or complete drives. Resizing is supported as well.

That’s basically the functionality of Paragon Drive Backup Express. The commercial Drive Backup software supports several interesting additional features like incremental backups, backup encryption, backup on CD / DVD and file restoration.