Backup Tools

DriveImage XML enables you create a complete backup image of any logical drive or partition, allowing to to restore your entire operating system along with installed programs, user settings, registry and all. You can restore the image later to the same or a different drive, and also choose to copy the drive directly to another one. The program includes an image explorer that lets you open previously created backup images and extract individual files. DriveImage XML can use volume locking or Volume Shadow Services (VSS) to create the backup image from within Windows, without the need to reboot. The program stores your images in .dat files, using XML format, allowing you to process them with 3rd party applications.

FileHamster is a real-time version tracking application for developers, graphic artist and other content creators that frequently modify existing files. The program allows you to define files and/or folders to be watched and automatically creates a backup copy whenever a monitored file is changed, giving you an option to add a comment to annotate the changes you have made. If the need arises, you can easily restore a previous revision of the file and undo the changes or track down problems. You can configure the number of revisions to keep, limit monitoring to specific file types and also download additional plug-ins to extend the functionalities. FileHamster is very easy to use and does not require any technical expertise - just point it to the file you want to monitor/backup and it will do the rest.

Driver Magician Lite enables you to backup selected device drivers to a folder or drive of your choice, so that you can re-install them later without the need for your original CD. The program automatically marks non-standard driver (that do not come included with Windows), allowing you to quickly find the drivers that have been added by devices such as printers, web cams etc.

Simple Backup Tool is (as implied by the name) a very simple application to automatically backup the content of one or more folders. You can specify the input folder and the backup location, and set the program to perform a backup every X minutes. It also offers the option to delete files in the backup folder that are no longer present in the original folder (mirroring). Suitable for the most basic backup needs, easy to use.

JaBack is a Java based backup software that allows you to backup files and folders to compressed zip archives. It offers automated backups with support for dynamic variables that can be used in output paths and file names. The backup options include backup to local folders or remote FTP servers, as well as emailing of the zipped backup file. You can schedule your backup tasks on an hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly basis, and also chain tasks to be run in sequence or conditionally depending on exit codes. The JaBack interface is not as easy to use and appealing as most Windows applications, and it does not support CD or DVD backup.

DFIncBackup Home is a personal backup program, that lets you create incremental backup set that are compressed and stored in zip files. It includes a scheduler that allows you to automate the backup every day or just on selected days. The program uses profiles that allow you to create backup templates based on multiple file types (e.g documents, email messages, images etc.), so you can quickly create new backup that are limited to specific files. Additional features include integrated CD burning, detailed logging, restore and archive management.

Uranium Backup Free is a personal backup tool that enables you to backup your data to local drives, network drives or external USB/Firewire drives. You can create multiple backup sets and choose to run them manually or schedule them for automatic execution. The free version is limited to simple backup sets, other versions can be purchased that offer features lacking in free version.

MailStore Home enables you to backup all your email messages from multiple applications into one persistent and safe archive. You can import your mail from Outlook, Windows Mail, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Exchange, as well as POP/IMAP accounts and local files. Your read your mail from within the interface, search through all your messages by keyword and advanced criteria, and even burn a Backup CD with the click of a button or export messages to .eml format. Messages are stored MIME-compatible, and can be recovered at any time without information loss.

Karens Replicator is an easy to use backup tool for basic file replications. You can choose to backup an entire folder (optional with subfolders) and copy it to a different location. You have the options to only copy files that have changed and also keep an exact copy, thereby deleting all the files in the target folder that have been deleted in the source. The program comes with a built in time, that allows you to schedule it to run at user defined times. You can create multiple jobs, however, each job is limited to the content of one folder (subfolders), you cannot exclude/include individual files. If all you need is to automatically backup the content of a few folders, than this tool is perfect for you.

Amic Email Backup enables you to backup and restore your email database, including address book, settings, mail and news accounts, message rules, blocked senders lists and signatures. The program supports Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Poco Mail, The Bat, IncrediMail and other email clients. Backups can be run manually or on a regular schedule, and are compressed into a single file that is named after the backup date. Other features include backup splitting (for CD storage), password protection and auto-cleanup of old backup files.

AceBackup 2004 allows you to create secure backups of your data, that can be stored on any local storage device, as well as on CD, DVD or on your remote FTP server. It offers five different encryption algorithms that can optionally be used to protect your data against unauthorized access (it can also encrypt the file names to hide their nature). Additional features include integration with Windows Task Manager, Smart Restore and more. The backups are kept in a proprietary format and require AceBackup in order to be restored.

Abakt is an easy to use but quite flexible backup tool that can create normal or compressed backups in ZIP format. You can create multiple backup profiles, select files and folders to be included and apply several advanced filters based on file type, attributes, size and date. The backup can be saved to a folder named after the current date (allows to keep multiple copies) or in a compressed archive that can be updated or split into fixed-size parts. The program does not come with a built-in scheduler, however supports command line arguments, allowing you to use in your own batch scripts via Windows Task Scheduler. Additional features include support for 7-Zip (if installed), detailed logging, zip backup restore and more.

Home Revision Management System (Home RMS) is a simple revision management tool that allows you to keep track of changes to a project, and can automatically backup the project folder each time, so that you have a full set of file revisions available.

Back4Win is an easy to use backup tool that uses zip compression to store all selected files and directories in a single archive. You can adjust the compression level, password protect the archive and more. Backup modes includes a refresh option, overwrite or move (then delete) of files. In addition, you can backup your data as a self-extracting EXE file, label backups with easy-to-find timestamps, span backup sets across disks and more. Back4Win also includes Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird backup. The program works with any drive letter, including mapped and network drives

HDHacker is a standalone utility for advanced users, that saves, visualizes, restores the MBR (from a physical drive), the BootSector (from a logical drive) or any other sector from a disk. It can be used to save and restore a particular boot manager, or as MBR and BootSector backup. You should know what you are doing when using this utility.

Cobian Backup is a small and simple utility to backup files and directories from some place in your computer to another place in the same computer or to a shared drive in another machine.You can set the program to automatically make a backup within regular intervals of time, for example daily, weekly etc. Cobian Backup offers additional support for PKzip compressions and can be run as a service under NT/2000/XP.

Photo Backup allows you to archive and backup your digital photos to CDs and DVDs. You can easily select the photos to be backed up and the program can automatically burn them to CD or DVD without the need for additional software. In addition, the program can create a HTML index with thumbnails and include it on the CD. It tracks which files have been backed up, so the next time, only new images are added to the media. Photo Backup automatically uses multi session CD/DVD burning and multi-disk spanning, to archive any number of files. Additional features include schedule backups, CD duplication and integrated restore. The free LE version is intended for home users, it can maintain a single backup archive and does not display thumbnails for professional file types like RAW, Adobe PSD and DNG files.

Font Install & Backup is a simple tool to backup and install fonts. It can backup your entire FONTS folder to a different folder or drive and later reinstall the fonts if needed.

XXCLONE enables you to create a clone of your hard drive on another disk and use it for backup or emergency recovery. The backup disk can be set bootable, allowing you to simply switch hard drives and run your system from the cloned drive if disk failure or other problems force such a measure, or if you want to upgrade to a new hard drive. Unlike disk imaging tools, XXCLONE does not create an image file, but uses standard file copy procedures to copy the files to the new volume. You may copy from FAT to NTFS or vice versa. The program supports USB disks, ATA and SATA drives. You can also duplicate the Volume ID, repair a non-bootable disk, and more. The freeware version of XXCLONE does not include the incremental backup features of the Pro version and is mostly intended to migrate your files to a new hard drive or for occasional backups of your entire system.

BackUpTime is an easy to use and flexible backup and automation utility. You can create various tasks to perform actions such as backing up files (with zip support), copying them to dynamic folder locations, cleaning up junk files, execute other programs and more. You can combine any of the available actions into complex tasks that perform multiple actions. Each task can be scheduled with the built-in scheduler and supports multiple activations.

Mozilla Backup enables you to create backups of your Mozilla, Mozilla Firebird, Mozilla Thunderbird and Netscape profiles. It allows you to backup mail, favorites, contacts, etc. The program offers an easy-to-use 3 step wizard that lets you select and backup the profiles to a folder of your choice.

Copy Muppy is an easy-to-use backup utility to copy or move folders from one location to another. Just select the folder to include in the backup, set optional file type filters and specify whether the files should be compared by date before processed. The program does not provide built-in scheduling , but offers command line switches to automate backup via third party tools or Windows Task Manager.

Genie Games Backup is a backup tool that offers integrated support for backup and restore of game settings, progress and more. It has all the functionalities of a standard backup tool, and can be used for regular file backups as well, as the game features are provided via plugins. The program supports normal, mirror and incremental backups to local local or LAN destinations (no CD/DVD or FTP supported in the free version), with additional options for compression and encryption. Genie Games Backup comes pre-configured with plug-ins for some of the most popular games, and you can also create your own plugins for games that are not already supported using the Plugin Creator.

xPodClone is a simple but effective tool that allows you to backup files from a removable device to your hard drive. It can be used with iPods, USB drives or even CDs or DVDs. Simply drag the device icon from Windows Explorer, and select or drag the folder to copy the files to. The program will automatically copy all files, including protected or hidden files to the specified folder. (Requires Java to run)

Acubix PicoBackup for Outlook Express enables you to backup all your Outlook Express email folders and settings. The program can perform the backups as needed, or automatically on a regular schedule. It supports full and incremental backups, as well as optional 256-bit encryption and zip compression. The backups can be stored to local or removable drives, remote FTP account or burned to CD or DVD.

RKopie is a program to create and manage customized backup jobs. It can create zip compatible archive files, span across disks, delete redundant files in the backup archive and more. The program allows you to create as many backup jobs as you need and include folders or individual files. Each backup set can be mapped to a location on your drive, so you can easily restore files, using the built in Restore feature. Easy to use, flexible and can be run from the command line to be used with Windows task Manager.

BackZip is a simple file backup program that stores backups in standard ZIP format or as normal (uncompressed) files. The backup sets can be stored locally, on a mapped network drive, or on an FTP server. It offers various options to select the files that should be included (by mask, extension etc.) and also lets you limit zip compression to specific file extensions. In addition, you can choose to only backup the files that have changed since the last backup or copy only files that are newer than a matching file in the target directory. Other features include timestamped backup files, support for multiple backup jobs and more. BackZip does not include any scheduling features, however it does support command-line parameters, which allows you to run it via Windows Task Scheduler or other 3rd party scheduling tools.

Simply Safe Backup is an easy-to-use backup program with integrated CD and DVD burning. You can backup your files to local disk, CD/DVD or to a remote FTP server ands easily restore them in full or part when needed. The interface is very similar to the NTBackup tool that comes included with XP/2000 but offers additional features as well as a search option and basic encryption of your data. Additional features include a Backup and restore wizard, options to exclude files folders, backup of files in use, volume splitting, registry backup and more. Unfortunately Simply Safe Backup lacks any kind of scheduling or automated backup, which limits the usability and makes it more suitable for users that perform occasional or irregular backups. The backups are stored in a proprietary format (.myc). Free version is limited to 40,000 files per backup set.

EZBack-it-up is a personal file backup utility. It is designed to be very easy to learn and use. It is not an archival tool that compresses all your files and folders into one file but instead, it copies your data to a destination of your choice where you can readily access your backed up files any time you need. All directory structure is preserved and you can optionally choose to delete files from the target that are not in the source. EZBack-it-up includes a built-in scheduler, additional command-line switches, logging functionality, and more.

Toolbar Chest for Outlook Express allows you to backup and restore your Outlook Express Toolbar, including content, position, layout settings, size and more. If you ever lose your setting, you can simply run the restore option to get them back.

Easy-Backup is a simple and straightforward backup utility that can automatically back up selected folders to a specified location. You can set it to run the backup every X hours or minutes and it will only transfer the files that have actually changed since the last backup. The program can run in the system tray.