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PCWorld September 25, 2007 by Jon L. Jacobi
Fifteen backup programs to safeguard your data.
It pays to back up your data; here are 15 traditional file-based backup, image backup, and continuous data protection tools that can help.There's no way around it: Malware happens, drive failure happens, natural disaster happens. If your data isn't backed up, it's gone — or it will require an extremely expensive, not-certain-to-succeed recovery operation. If all you have on your system are scribblings and unimportant downloads, you might not care. But you probably have something of value: scanned pictures of ancestors, wedding videos, a presentation you worked all week on, the song that's going to make you famous. It pays to back up, and it has never been easier to do so. No matter what method you're most comfortable with, be it traditional file-based backup, image backup, or continuous data protection, one of the following 15 tools will do the trick.
Traditional backupTraditional backup (also called file-based backup) programs read and write data at the file level, and are the oldest type of backup available. The biggest distinctions between products lie in their ability to back up open files (files being edited by apps, or locked by the operating system), support for professional hardware such as tape drives, and disaster recovery — namely, the ability to boot from a CD and restore the system as well as data.
Backups based on imaging"Imaging" is the copying of the entire contents of a hard-drive partition — the boot sector, operating system, and data — to a single file. The beauty of an image is that creating or restoring one takes only a single step — backup and disaster recovery just don't get any easier. That said, the line between traditional-backup programs and imaging apps is blurring. Programs such as Norton Save & Restore and Acronis True Image now have the ability to back up individual files and folders in addition to full partitions, and can even perform incremental and differential backups.
Continuous backupContinuous data protection (CDP), sometimes called real-time backup, tracks files and backs them up whenever they change. Think of it as something like selective RAID mirroring, where only the files and folders you choose are copied. Unfortunately, CDP suffers the same weakness as RAID mirroring does: It might back up corrupted and infected files, as well as pieces of malware. The risk is substantially reduced, however, since nearly all CDP programs let you keep multiple versions of the files you back up, and normally you'll be backing up only data, not the executables that are most prone to attack. All told, CDP may cost you a few CPU cycles here and there, but it's a great way to keep your system backed up at all times.
Acronis True Image Home 11In breadth of features, Acronis True Image can't be beat. It runs from within Windows or from a Linux-based boot disc, creates full and incremental images, and also backs up single files and folders. It offers the usual compression and encryption options, and if you opt for the more expensive Workstation version you can also purchase a Universal Restore module that will restore images to a PC with a different hardware profile from the one that the image was created on. Version 11's interface is friendlier than past editions, though still unintuitive at times, and it presents some very useful new features. Try & Decide mode, for example, works like a proactive Windows Restore, writing changes to the program's Secure Zone hidden recovery partition and committing them later only at your discretion. Turn it on before you install unfamiliar software or browse to suspicious Web sites. In my gold beta it caused a noticeable performance hit, but it's a nice safeguard to have. In addition, you can now restore individual files and folders from a full image within the main program, as well as perform a quick system-state backup; you also get improved filtering and masking for file and folder backup. The interface may be befuddling in spots, but True Image is the best all-around backup software on the market. Price: $50; 15-day trial
Download Acronis True Image Home 11 PCWorld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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