LojiklSweep has a professional look and feel to it despite the fact that it is currently offered for free by the developing company. You need to register on the website to receive a serial number for the backup program, but registration is free and the serial registers the program for a year.

When you first start the program you need to enter that serial number to enable all program functionality. Once done you have options to create a custom backup project or use a pre-configured project that backs up prominent folders on the operating system with a few clicks.

One of the interesting features of the application are the available backup options. Here it is for instance possible to select important Windows folders including the user folder, system fonts or Windows Live Mail, Registry hubs or specific folders from a connected storage device.

Other options that can be configured right away are extensive filtering options, like including or excluding file types, using file dates for file selection or files with specific attributes. Another feature is the option to
execute batch files and scripts before or after a backup job.

The backup program supports storing backups on local or network drives, online storage services or on optical discs. Especially the online backup services that are available by default worth mentioning. They include ftp and WebDAV as well as DropBox, Box.net, CloudMe and Storegate at the time of writing. Even top notch commercial backup services usually do not offer this variety.

Other features include encryption and compression, advanced timestamping options and email notification options.

Backups can be scheduled to run backups automatically. Another interesting option is the ability to create a backup project shortcut on the desktop to run a backup manually with a double-click on that shortcut.

LojiklSweep’s built-in restore manager can be used to display differences between the backup and backed up locations. The program will tell you “what is new, what has changed and what is missing”.

One of the few aspects that can be seen as a negative is that the program is not displaying storage size information when selecting folders, files or data on the system. While it is for instance possible to select the current user profile for backup, it is not possible to determine in the program if a Dropbox account would have enough space available to store the backup. That’s something that the developers need to work on.

The second issue that I personally have with the backup software is that the serial that you get is only activating the application for a year. It is likely that the developers will at one point in time make the decision to release the software as a commercial application. It is not clear if and how you can then use the program to restore previously created backups.

Interested Windows users can download LojiklSweep from the developer website. The software is offered as a 32-bit and 64-bit application for the Windows operating system.

Feebes Backup is a lightweight Windows backup software that comes with several advanced options that can make it an interesting backup alternative to some users.

Backups are handled in jobs which can be configured individually. They are least consist of a source and target file. The first difference to many other backup applications becomes obvious in this configuration menu.

Feebes Backup can not only backup local files but also files on ftp servers and Amazon S3. These locations can also be used as the target location for the backups. The software therefor supports both local and remote backups.

Filters can be configured to backup only selected files and folders instead of everything that is stored in the source folder. Feebees Backup supports fault tolerance settings that define the maximum number of errors and retries of individual backup jobs.

• Transparently backup between Windows, FTP, Amazon S3 and ZIP
• Works in multilingual environments – both Unicode and non-Unicode
• Unique fast backup – initial full backup is not necessary
• Full featured filtering w/ preview capability
• Flexible scheduling system
• Customizable fault tolerance backup
• Visual backup job simulation
• User-defined variables
• Command line interface for script integration

The backup software offers many options to customize the backups. It is for instance possible to select the files to backup manually or to define exclude or include filters.

The simulation button at the bottom of the backup creation window will display a simulated run of the job. The files and folders that will be backed up and those that will be skipped are displayed after the simulation so that the user can evaluate the filters.

Feebes Backup is compatible with most Microsoft Windows operating systems including 64-bit editions. The program requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0. It seems that the developer has abandoned the project. The backup software on the other hand works fine.

The most important parameters are the source and destination directory for the backup. Filters are available to include or exclude specific file types and even complete subdirectories from the backup. These filters can be set for each folder individually which gives the user a lot of control over the files and folders that will be backed up.

File versioning and monitoring are two options that are available in advanced tasks only. File versioning can be configured to keep x versions of a backed up file before it gets deleted while file monitoring will monitor create, delete and change events and initiate backups whenever an event occurs. The default mode is set to realtime backups which can be changed in the program’s options. Another interesting feature of Yadis! Backup is the ability to memorize backup jobs if the destination folder is not available at that point in time. The backup will then be performed once the destination folder for that backup becomes available again.

Yadis! Backup is a free backup software for the Windows operating system. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website. No compatibility information are provided. It was tested successfully on a Windows XP SP3 computer system.

Tabs provide access to the backup software’s functionality. The configuration of the backup is handled in the manual backup tab. It might look like backup overload at first glance because of the options the developer has stuffed in the interface. There are basically four sections of importance here. Section one defines the first directory on the local computer system while section three defines the second directory. Section 2 defines the direction of the backup which can either be from directory one to directory two, directory two to directory one or in both directions. It also handles the backup modes which include copying all files, erasing the source, mirroring the directories or updating data.

The last section can be used to create filters. It is possible to define filters by time and date or file size and names. A new batch job can then be created after the configuration has been finished.

Backups can then be created by switching to the batch backup tab and clicking on the Make Backup List button. This will create the file list for the backup. A click on the Execute Backup List will start the backup process. Another option is to click directly on the Batch Run button to create the backup list and start the backup.

The third tab of the backup program provides access to a few global options that include enabling reporting, creating empty directories or copying file attributes.

Zback is a portable backup software program that can create quick data backups. It lacks functionality mainly thanks to its portable nature.

A registration is required which requires entering a name and valid email address. A verification email is send to the mail account. That link leads to a website containing the download link of East-Tec Backup 2009 and the registration code to register the software program.

The backup software program offers four modules in the main interface: Backup, Restore, Tasks and Sync.

New backup jobs are created in this module. One of the interesting – and user friendly – features of East-Tec Backup 2009 are presets that are available. Presets can be used to backup specific, and usually important, files and data. It is for example possible to backup the mail accounts (recognized the email clients Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook and Opera on the test system), Registry keys or user settings from programs such as Skype, Windows Live Messenger, Winamp, Windows Media Player, various web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera but not Google Chrome), Putty and dozens more. It is of course also possible to select files or folders from the computer system.

The data can be backed up to local folders, external hard drives, local area network folders, removable disks, CD, DVD or remote locations using the ftp protocol. The usual set of options are available to use compression and encryption to ensure data safety and integrity. Several backup types can be selected ranging from incremental backups over differential backups to stack backups. Backups can be scheduled and warnings configured.

It is furthermore possible to run programs before and after the task starts and to verify the backup after it has been completed. Another great option is to place backup jobs into groups which can be executed sequentially then.

Backups that have been created can be restored completely. It is also possible to only restore specific files or folders which is obviously great if you only need access to some files or folders of the entire backup.

The Sync option makes it possible to synchronize files and folders between two computers or devices like a local computer and server, desktop computer and laptop or a local computer and a network location.

The interface of the backup software is user friendly, tasks are easy to create. Users who are currently looking for a backup software should take a closer look and download East-Tec Backup 2009 for a test run. It might be exactly what they are looking for.

Update: The offer is over, the page where you could get the free copy of the backup software is no longer available.

The very same menu offers the ability to add filters that specify specific file extensions that should be included or excluded in the backup. Filters can easily be configured in the advanced options of the backup software program.

The options are also home to various other backup related settings including the configuration of compression and encryption settings, running programs before or after backup jobs, scheduling backups and selecting a backup type (full or mirror backups).

Probably the most interesting features are plugins that can be added to FBackup. A plugin is basically an xml file that has been created to backup specific data or programs. Several plugins are already supplied with the default installation which can be used to backup the My Documents folder or Microsoft Outlook data. Dozens of additional plugins can be downloaded from the plugin repository for data of Mozilla Firefox, Nero Burning Rom, Songbird, Thunderbird, Skype, Roboform, Mirc, ICQ, uTorrent, Opera and multiple other popular computer programs.

Each plugin can be added to the backup software easily and becomes then automatically available during the creation of new data backup jobs.

Free Backup can be downloaded directly from the developer’s website. It is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 7, Windows XP, Windows Vista, windows Server 2003 and 2008. FBackup is free for both commercial and private use.

Fling is a file transfer software that can be used to transfer and backup files over a computer network and ftp. It’s two main uses are to backup files that are stored on a local computer system to computers in the network or to an ftp server located on the Internet.

The developers have added some other options that include backing up files between local hard drives, update a remote website over ftp or to automate transfers of files to an USB drive.

The program displays a wizard upon first start which will aid the user in setting up the first backup or transfer job. The user needs to enter some data after making the selection. The type of data depends largely on the selected job. Backing up data to a remote ftp server requires the ftp login credentials and IP while backing up files between two local hard drives requires only the selection of the folders involved.

The last step is included in every setup. It asks the user to select an update and scan option. Possibilities are manual updates, automatic updates when changes are detected (that means almost instantly), interval scans to check for changes occasionally and on demand folder scans.

It is possible to skip the wizard and configure the service manually. This adds a few additional option to the file transfer which could be interesting for experienced users.

It is for example possible to exclude files from being copied (using wildcards, e.g. *.exe), prevent the deletion of remotely hosted files or to delete local files after a successful file transfer.

Fling’s main advantage is that it is not complicated to setup. It takes roughly a minute to configure a backup or file transfer job in the software program. Fling is available for the Microsoft Windows operating system, more precisely for all major releases of the last years including Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, 2008 and Windows 7.

You might want to check out our article on Windows backup software to read about additional free programs that can be used to backup and transfer data.

F.Lux

I reviewed the computer monitor lighting solution a while ago and it is actually one of the few applications that run all the time on my main computer system. Flux changes the brightness color temperature of the computer display automatically. It uses a 24 hour graph to visualize the changes. The color temperature will be normal throughout the day and be lowered automatically as the day passes to adjust to the real world. You will love this application if you have to look at (to) bright computer screens especially in the evening and at night.

2. Speedfan

Speedfan is an interesting application to monitor system temperatures and control fan speeds. Users run usually in two scenarios. The first group thinks that their computer system makes to much noise while the second has to fight high temperatures that can lead to crashes and data loss. Speedfan can help both groups. It can lower the fan speed of connected computer fans automatically to reduce the overall noise level of the computer system. It can also warn the user if temperatures are reached that can cause damage and problems.

3. Drive Namer

Drive Namer is an excellent application to add names to optical drives such as DVD or CD drives. Windows is blocking the name changing on those drives by default which gets confusing if more than one optical drive is installed or virtual drives are used. All of the drives will be named DVD Drive or CD Drive. Drive Namer can change that name to something practical that helps identifying the drive at first glance.

4. Deltacopy

Windows Backup Software Deltacopy is a sophisticated backup software program that uses a client server approach which makes it ideal for computers located in a network.

Backups are the single most effective method of preventing data loss on computer systems. The following article will list the 10 best Windows backup software programs.

EASEUS Todo Backup 3.0 Free

The Windows backup software has just recently been released in a new version. The application can backup files, folders, partitions and complete disk images. It offers recovery options, cloning, disk wiping, image integrity checks and a scheduler. Without doubt one of the most popular and feature rich backup programs for the Windows operating system. You can read a full review of Easeus Todo Backup here.

Cobian Backup

cobian backup

Cobian Backup is a free backup software for personal use that supports both local and remote backups. The software is constantly under development by the developer which means that features are included regularly. Some of the key features include full, differential and incremental backups, file compression including the popular 7-zip format plus strong encryption for data security.

DeltaCopy

windows backup software

An Open source backup solution supporting incremental backups, one-click restore options, task scheduling and email notifications. Some advanced options include ssh tunneling and connecting to rsync daemons.

It makes use of a server client system. One or multiple backup servers can be created on computers running Windows by installing the server version on these computer systems. The client will be installed on the any computer system where files should be backed up regularly.

The free backup software supports authentication, scheduling and connection by IP or hostname.

Cucku Backup Discontinued

cucku backup

Cucku Backup calls itself social backup. It provides local backups but also backups on friend?s computers. It supports complete and continuous backups and can automate the remote backup process to take that of the user’s shoulders. All files that are backed up use encryption algorithms to ensure data safety and integrity so that the backup partners cannot see the file names nor contents of the files that are send over to their computer systems.

It works best in computer networks but can also work over the Internet if enough time or upload bandwidth is provided.

Backup Maker

The free backup software Backup Maker provides extensive backup capabilities. It comes with a standard and expert mode to suite both the needs of experienced and inexperienced users. The software supports full and partial backups, local and remote backups, selection of a backup execution interval and execution on certain events like USB detection or start and shutdown.

All in all an excellent software program to backup files on the Windows operating system.

Ace Backup

ace backup

Powerful free backup software that supports multi-versioning, backups to local and remote locations, file compression and encryption.

Microsoft SyncToy

synctoy

SyncToy is offered by Microsoft as a free download for the Windows operating system. It can be used to easily synchronize data between computer systems. The program offers five different synchronization options that the user can choose from including a preview option before starting the process.

Mozy

mozy

Mozy is an online backup solution that offers backup clients for Windows NT based systems and Mac OS X. Every registered user receives 2 Gigabytes of free space with the option to sign up for a paid account for currently $4.95 that offers unlimited backup space. Several pre-configured backup sets are populated after installation including bookmarks, documents and multimedia files. These can but do not have to be backed up. Expert mode provides access to the full file system to pick files or folders to backup directly.

Personal Backup

personal backup

A free backup software for the advanced user that provides great file filtering options. It comes with the usual set of features including local and remote backup creation (including SFTP), file compression and encryption, status reports and log file generation.

Allways Sync

allways sync

Another software that has been primarily designed for file synchronization that is also supporting file backups to a local drive, over a local network or the Internet. It works on a per directory basis and can be installed on as many computer systems as the user desires. The software comes as a setup or portable version.

Comodo Backup

comodo backup

Another free backup solution for Windows users. Comodo Backup can backup files and folders on a local computer system to other drives, network locations, ftp servers and removable media. Backups can be scheduled and notifications can be send to inform about completed backup jobs. Other features include compressing backups, data recovery options, support of multi-session backups and incremental backups.

DriveImage XML

driveimage xml

DriveImage XML is more a drive imaging software than a backup program. It can however be used to backup a full hard drive or partition to another drive. It uses the Volume Shadow Service to create exact backups during runtime. It is afterwards possible to restore the backup either from within Windows or with the use of a boot disk.

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition

Macrium Reflect is a file backup and disk imaging solution for the Windows operating system. It comes with all the bells and whistles one would expect, from extensive options to backup files to scheduling features, encryption and password protection to protect the data from third parties, 32-bit and 64-bit operating system support, logging, a Linux based Rescue CD with network access and options to save the backup to network drives, USB storage, Firewire drives or optical drives.

Areca Backup

Areca Backup is a free open source backup solution for Windows. It supports incremental, image and delta backups on both local drives and ftp servers.

It basically allows you to select a set of files / directories to back-up, choose where and how (as a simple file copy, as a zip archive, …) they will be stored, and configure post-backup actions (like sending backup reports by email or launching custom shell scripts)

The verdict:

The choice of the correct backup software depends on several factors including the data size, the frequency of backups or the local computer infrastructure. It is therefor not possible to point at one application and crown it the best free backup software.

Update: A lot of new backup applications have been released in recent years. Here is a selection of the programs that have been released in that time:

Mailstore Home Backup – A specialized backup program to backup emails. It supports both desktop email clients as well as Pop3 and SMTP servers. The program is very versatile and free. The new version is available as a portable version as well, ideal for an USB stick.

Macrium Reflect Free – This is a disk imaging software that can create a mirror image of a disk partition or complete hard drive. The free version is relatively limited in functionality.

The fast backup mode that is displayed by default consists of steps to select the files and folders on the computer system that should be included in the backup, the backup execution interval (execute every x minutes, execute at, execute on (Windows start, USB detection, Windows logoff), week days or months days, the selection of full or partial backups or combined execution (create full backup after x partial ones), the selection of the target directory (local drives, CD / DVD or ftp) and a descriptive name. Backups can also be executed manually by the user in the main interface as opposed to being executed automatically.

The six configuration steps that are added in expert mode allow the user to add more detail to the backup process.The steps allow the user to include or exclude specific files or folders, add a maximum single file size, how and if to catch up on missed backups, define the maximum number of full and partial backup instances, to backup only files with the archive bit set, adding password protection, things that should be executed before or after the backup and to split the backup into different parts.

Backup Maker is a full Windows backup software that should satisfy most users who are seeking for a reliable backup software for their operating system. Interested readers can take a look at the 10 best windows backup software programs.

We covered Windows backup software before at Ghacks but never before a portable software that could backup partitions and hard drives.

ODIN, which stands for Open Disk Imager, is a portable Open-Source backup software that can backup partitions and hard drives with the exception of the system partition. It is currently available in a very early beta which should not be used in a productive environment.

The hard drive backup software is able to backup or restore data. The current version is easy to use. Backing up data basically involves picking a drive letter or physical drive, selecting a location to store the hard drive image, optionally changing a few parameters and hitting the start button.

The options provide access to a few interesting settings like turning on gzip or bzzip2 compression, splitting data into chunks or saving only used or all blocks of the partition or physical drive.

Restoring an image is as straightforward and easy. The user has to pick the partition or physical drive and select the image that should be restored.

The hard drive backup software has a few limitations which probably will be removed in later builds of the software. The inability to create a backup of the system partition is probably the biggest.

DeltaCopy is an Open Source portable Windows backup software that supports incremental backups, email notifications, one-click restore options and a task scheduler in an easy to use interface. It will run on any Windows NT based operating systems. The developers have not listed Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 on their web pages.

Interestingly enough it can connect to rsync daemons running on Linux systems since it basically is a Windows wrapper around rsync. SSH Tunneling is available if the destination server is a Linux / Unix system running rsync.

How does the Windows backup software work?

The administrator installs the server version of Deltacopy on one machine. The backup software installs itself as a Windows Service. Once the server is up and running so called virtual directories can be created. This is a similar procedure to setting up an ftp server. The admin picks a folder on a hard drive on the server with the option to create multiple virtual directories on the server.

The client is then executed on a client machine. Profiles manage the backup jobs on the client machine. This is the place where the user selects the files and folders that should be backed up regularly. The backup server will be entered during that configuration as well. The server can be identified by entering the IP or hostname of the server running the backup software.

Authentication is possible. This has to be enabled during server setup and the client computer has to use the same login credentials that have been created on the server to be able to perform the backup.

Backups can be initiated either manually or by using the Windows Task Scheduler. Files can be restored from the client interface if the need should arise.

DeltaCopy is a sophisticated but not overly complicated Windows backup software that works best for small home and company networks.

The interface seems to have received its last lift in the last century which would not be that of a problem if there would not be so many buttons and menus available. It takes a while to get used to the interface but once that has been achieved users will reap the benefits of the backup software.

Personal Backup supports the creation of backups on local and network hard drives as well as ftp servers using ftp and sftp connections. The first ace that is actually a pretty handy feature is the creation of several so called auto backups which can be configured independently of each other. That comes in handy with the excellent filtering options of Personal Backup.

As soon as a folder or partition gets added to the backup list it is scanned and a list of all file types, their count and total sizes are displayed next to the usual information like directories and many options.

The listing of file types makes it pretty comfortable to pick certain file types that should be backed up on all hard drives and schedule those backups next to other backups. One scenario would be to backup all .doc, .xls and other document formats on all drives regularly which is just a few clicks away in Personal Backup.

The filtering options of this Windows backup software are immense. Filters can be set to match filenames, file attributes, file sizes, time and regular expressions. The preview button can be used to check on the files that would be backed up by Personal Backup which can be used for verification.

The options that define the output are as extensive as the filtering options. Some of the backup options include:

• To backup single files or one zip.
• Preserve, ignore the directory structure, create separate directories for drives.
• To compress the files and add file type exceptions.
• To encrypt the backup using AES.
• To add notes, send emails and run external programs before and after backup.
• To synchronize files
• To verify files
• To chose a backup mode from Copy, Full, Differential and Incremental.
• To adjust the time gap for timestamp comparison
• Creation of a backup log
• Integrated restore function for whole trees or selected files
• Automatic decryption on restore
• Synchronise backup directories

The Windows backup software contains so many options that it will really take a while before everything has been discovered. Most of the options are not needed to perform a simple backup but Personal Backup is more a software for users who want to make exact backups on their system, who want to point at the exact data and backup that data.

Backups can be scheduled multiple ways which range from daily to weekly backups. It is also possible to combine backup methods during the scheduled backups, for instance to create multiple backups for data safety purposes.