Free Backup Software Roundup!

Losing your valuable files as a result of a hard drive failure, virus attack or even accidental file deletion can be very devastating. Whether it’s your photos, giant music collection, important documents - data loss is always costly and stressful. Hard drives always crash, it’s just a matter of time, therefore DO regular backups. Especially when there are so many free backup software options that can run regular backups automatically. Just set it once to run scheduled backups every week or so and forget about them. Then when disaster happens you will be able to restore your files in no time.

Three quick tips for using freeware backup effectively.

1. Backup to a second drive. NOT a second partition on the same drive!! Data loss is very often caused by disk failure. This alone will dramatically increase your data security.
2. Shut down Outlook at night. Backup software often cannot access Outlook database files while the program is running. Shut it down at night so that your email can be safely archived while you sleep.
3. Archive backup data to DVD periodically. Write your entire backup archive to DVD or DVD-RW every week or two and store the disk at a remote location.

There are numerous quality free and paid backup softwares that can backup your information so that even if the hard drive failed, your valuable information will still be alive. Here are some of them..

Amanda

Bacula

BackupPC

Rdiff-backup

rsnapshot

Storgrid Personal

AceBackup

ICE Mirror

Freebyte Backup

SyncBack

Comodo Backup

Back2zip - Backup Software

Hinx Backup Easy

Free Online Backup Services : Mozy and DropBox

Mozy is a simple and safe way to back up all the important stuff on your computer. A copy of your data is stored in a secure, remote location for safekeeping, so that in the event of disaster your data is still retrievable.

You can use Dropbox to automatically backup a subset of your files, and to access them when traveling. You can also use the service to easily share files with friends and coworkers. Just right click on a folder and select “Share”. You’ll be taken to a webpage where you can enter the email addresses of who you want to share the folder with. When your friends add files to that shared folder, they will automatically get downloaded to your machine in addition to getting backed up online.

Category: BackupManager, Freeware