Definitive Best Backup Software 2012

[Lee G. Veteran]

An updated "Best Backup Software" poll for 2012. Please use this as a reference when researching backup utilities. As time goes on, the poll can be updated to add further options.

Please choose one app or N/A per category when voting.

Happy Voting!

[spikey_richie]

Still a fan of Cobian Backup at home.

[stevember]

The flexibility in Acronis Trueimage is amazing, it allows you to do every kind of backup possible and simple to use.

I use it as:

Complete clone monthly of my system drive, with incremental backups every 48 hours.

Incremental backup weekly of my other drives.

Continuous backup with up to 50 revisions of my work folder and a few other important folders.

Online backup of my work folder etc (external and network hard drives are fine but they are still on the premises and they can still break)

It has already got me out of trouble several times in the past few months, normally my stupidity granted.

My favourites before was Genie backup.

[Lee G. Veteran]

I voted for Acronis True Image. I agree that it's very flexible, and from my experience it's quick, and I've never had any problems with it.

[neoraptor]

Areca Backup

- open source

- no proprietary formats

- encryption (AES)

- incremental

- compression

[patseguin Global Moderator]

I voted for Symantec because I use Symantec System Restore (I think that's what it's called) at work to do all my backups and it uses shadow copy, so it can backup without any performance loss.

I voted other for home because I use StorageCraft ShadowProtect. It uses the same shadow copy technology and backups are very fast and in the interface is very nice. So many people have voted for Acronis I guess I might have to take a look at it at least.

[professor007]

hi

[AOXOMOXOA]

I really like using the Free version of GFI back up. but now I would like to use something like this on my server to back up all of my family pictures to a removable drive. The reason i liked GFI is that you can do un compressed backups. and incremental backups when ever you schedule them to run.

But it does not run on server 2003.

does anybody have another solution for doing the same thing on server 2003?? hopefully for free?

[AOXOMOXOA]

The new GFI Free back up software now works with Windows 2003 server. I'm really surprised that nobody has mentioned it at all. I have been using GFI for a while now on a lot of different machines. I have never had an issuee.

[juniorelson0110]

Macrium Reflect Free

[richp21]

We use phd virtual for our esxi environment and it works really well.

[The King of GnG]

Acronis True Image, yuck: the ********* experience I had with a backup software, it wasn't even able to detect my HDD - the same HDD on which I had already installed the program. Acronis epic FAIL, and Macrium Reflect Free FTW....

[nabz0r Veteran]

I'd go for Acronis for both home and work but I kind of like Norton Ghost too. I have used it many times couple of years ago and it does what it says in my opinion.

[IrfanL]

At home, I use batch script to copy my data to external HDD.

At work, we are using CA ArcServe Backup.

[Lance Schendel]

There is a good new one that is free: WinDataReflector Free (file synchronization and backup)

main strengthes of this one:

- visual comparison

- can run several backup jobs simultaneously in tabs

- compression

....

main draw back is that it doesn't support OS image creation, just folders and files.

[urigagarin]

There is a good new one that is free: WinDataReflector Free (file synchronization and backup)

main strengthes of this one:

- visual comparison

- can run several backup jobs simultaneously in tabs

- compression

....

main draw back is that it doesn't support OS image creation, just folders and files.

There are so many backup software available but few days back I used an Office Password recovery tool. which helps me a lot in recovery of lost PST password. I had disappointed due to password lost because due to that I had to loss my PST files also. Then I used it and recover that. These are some definitive backup software.