The Best Free Backup Software and Why it is Difficult to Find One

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BackupPC

BackupPC is a simple yet effective cross-platform backup tool that offers high performance and can work with all of the different types of operating systems. Aside from its main purpose of creating backups of multiple client instances to a server, it also offers a convenient web interface, data deduplication capabilities, as well as data compression, flexible configuration, and no need for any client-side software to be installed. It is an open-source solution that has its source code available at both SourceForge and Github.

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2

Amanda

Amanda, or Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver, works in a similar fashion as the previous example, offering the ability for system administrators to arrange and schedule backups of multiple user systems to one backup server. It supports optical media, tape drives, disks and changers and has native clients for both Windows and Linux users to be able to backup Linux, Unix and Windows desktops or servers with no issues whatsoever. Its source code is available at Sourceforge, making Amanda a solution that is both free and open-source.

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3

Clonezilla

Clonezilla claims to be a similar software solution to what Acronis True Image and other programs offered – a disk imaging/cloning program with unimpressive capabilities but with an amazing operation speed. Clonezilla has different versions of itself for regular users and servers with large numbers of machines – Clonezilla live and Clonezilla SE, respectively. It can perform bare metal recovery, simplifies system deployment, uses an efficient way of cloning existing information (reading and copying only those memory blocks that were used in some way), and can work with about 40 machines at the same time, or more.

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The process of picking the best free backup solution for your company can be boiled down to two important steps – figuring out what features you are looking for and picking up a backup solution based on those features. For example, if data encryption is one of your biggest priorities in backups then you may consider Duplicato as a good backup solution. At the same time, if you want a versatile, flexible solution that can work with many different systems and is relatively user-friendly, Bacula Community would be the top pick for you.

5

Bacula

This is why this part of our article focuses on the best free backup software that can be used specifically in commercial environments. However, these solutions are at their best when interacting with smaller or middle-sized companies and systems, meaning that it is highly recommended to look for a full-fledged premium enterprise-level backup solution if your company is big enough to be considered an enterprise. For example, Bacula offers a low cost, enterprise version for even the largest companies, that has modular components so that users only pay for what they need.

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6

Bacula Enterprise

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7

rsync

Rsync is the very definition of bare-bones backup software. It is a backup tool that is made for Unix systems with the ability to operate it both via the graphic interface and the command line. It allows for its users to perform local and remote backups on multiple devices, including incremental backups. Rsync also has the capability to sync systems across the internet with other hosts and has the ability to update the entire file system and the directory tree of the user.

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8

UrBackup

UrBackup is another example of a client/server backup solution that is free, open-source and has a very narrow scope in terms of what it is capable of performing. In this case, UrBackup is capable of performing both image-level and file backups without interrupting the system. It can also perform incremental backups with an astonishing speed and has multiple different locations to restore your backups to – using the client, the web interface or even the basic Windows explorer. It can also create backups of drive volumes and is capable of restoring them with bootable appliances – be it a USB drive or a CD disk.

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9

Duplicati

As the name suggests, the main purpose of Duplicati is to duplicate data – in other words, to create backups. Duplicati can work on all of the modern operating systems such as Linux, Windows and MacOS, and it also supports a variety of data sharing protocols – SSH, FTP and WebDAV. It allows its users to store encrypted backups in their compressed form either on one of the cloud storage servers or within a remote file server. Other features include transfer customization, filtering, deletion rules, and so on.

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10

Areca Backup

Areca Backup is a versatile open-source backup solution released under the GPL v2 license. It offers quite a lot in terms of backup customization, such as what areas to backup, where and when to store them, and what actions to take after the backup process is complete. It can also offer splitting, data encryption, data compression and a user-friendly interface (with the ability to work with the software using command line console, as well). However, it may be more suitable for personal backup purposes and not company-level backups due to the way it promotes itself (as a “personal backup solution”).

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11

AOMEI Backupper

AOMEI Backupper may not work with operating systems other than Windows, but it packs enough features to make up for it – including backup, system cloning, file syncing, and more. Some of the more detailed features of AOMEI Backupper include various scheduling options, file-level backup and restore capabilities, partition backup, partition cloning, as well as imaging and backup automatization packed into a user-friendly interface. It is worth noting that AOMEI Backupper Standard only allows its usage for free in non-commercial environments.

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12

Paragon Backup & Recovery

Claiming that Paragon Backup & Recovery is just that – a backup and recovery tool – would be a massive understatement, since it is basically a data management solution with backup capabilities. The list of features that Paragon provides includes targeted backups, backup scheduling, disk space management features, versioning, the capability to backup an entire OS and even the capability to restore backups from the Windows PE environment. It is worth noting that the free version of Paragon Backup & Recovery (Community Edition) is only available for non-commercial usage.

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13

Personal Backup

A relatively simple solution with a straightforward name – Personal Backup is a free backup software that has the basic package of a personal backup solution. It can backup directories and single files (even though adding multiple single files at once is not possible), as well as backup scheduling, data compression, data encryption, as well as several different backup target locations – FTP, network share, external drive, local storage or even another folder within the same system. At the same time, Personal Backup’s interface is not the most convenient or user-friendly in the world, which might be somewhat inconvenient for some users.

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14

Cobian Backup

Cobian Backup is a rather complicated backup solution, definitely not the most user-friendly one on this list. It offers a lot of flexibility when it comes to backup creation – with multiple backup operations performing simultaneously, several possible backup locations (network, local storage, FTP server, etc.), as well as scheduling, encryption and compression. However, its biggest downside is that Cobian Backup cannot restore its own backups – all of that needs to be done manually, making it fairly inconvenient for some of the more laid back use cases.

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15

Macrium Reflect

Macrium Reflect 8 and its free version are not the most conventional backup solutions out there, with the ability of imaging and cloning being the main capability of the software and the inability to backup anything smaller than a disk partition. However, it is still considered a personal backup solution that offer backup scheduling, different backup storage locations, and even supports multiple backup locations at once. There are file-level and folder-level backup capabilities, though, but they are locked behind a paywall and unavailable for the free version – the same goes for backup encryption and ransomware protection.

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16

MiniTool ShadowMaker

MiniTool ShadowMaker is a tool that has a rather impressive feature set for a free version – one of the few solutions on the list that can offer both file-level backup and the capability to backup entire hard drives. This software can run incremental backups on a schedule with a variable time frame between backups (a day, a week or a month), it can save backups to external or local storage drives or to network locations, and it can even set custom backup file size for specific storage drives (CDs, for example). Other features include password protection, email alerts, data compression and backup verification.

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17

EaseUS ToDo BackUp

EaseUS Todo Backup has a surprisingly long list of features for a free backup solution, with different backup types and only some of the more sophisticated features being locked behind a paywall – such as backups triggered by events, Outlook backups and data transfer from one PC to another. Aside from those, EaseUS Todo Backup offers several different backup types, as well as scheduling capabilities, different backup targets in the form of partitions, drives or individual files.

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18

Iperius Backup

Iperius Backup combines a medium-sized set of features with a user-friendly interface in this free backup software. It can transfer backups to several different locations, the software itself is convenient and easy to use, and there are three different backup types available. Iperius Backup can also provide password protection, data compression into ZIP archives, and even some of the more uncommon features such as backing up system and hidden files or performing specific actions after the backup process is complete (such as turning off the machine).

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19

Redo Rescue

Another example of an extremely specific backup solution is Redo Rescue. Once again, it is fairly easy to surmise the nature of the service from its name – it would act as a “rescue” tool for your system. Redo Rescue can only backup your entire hard drive when loaded from a bootable device of sorts (it also means that you cannot launch it from within your OS at all), and it can be used to transfer your backup to multiple different locations, be it FTP, SSH, NFS, or just a shared network folder. The files created with this software also cannot be read by a regular file explorer and would have to be unpacked and restored with Redo Rescue for them to be useful to you.

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20

FBackup

While FBackup’s interface might not be the most visually appealing on the list, it packs a relatively capable backup utility that can work in manual mode and also has a helpful wizard to assist someone who is less knowledgeable in the topic. FBackup can create backups of files and folders to one of several locations – from local storage to network drives or Google Drive cloud storage. You can also schedule these backups, but this is about where the limits of the free version of the software end. Unfortunately, the list of paid features of FBackup also includes encryption, incremental backups and FTP backups, which might be crucial for some people.

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21

Google Drive

While FBackup’s interface might not be the most visually appealing on the list, it packs a relatively capable backup utility that can work in manual mode and also has a helpful wizard to assist someone who is less knowledgeable in the topic. FBackup can create backups of files and folders to one of several locations – from local storage to network drives or Google Drive cloud storage. You can also schedule these backups, but this is about where the limits of the free version of the software end. Unfortunately, the list of paid features of FBackup also includes encryption, incremental backups and FTP backups, which might be crucial for some people.

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22

pCloud

Following the same logic as with the aforementioned Google Drive, pCloud is not a backup software per se, but it can act as one by providing limited cloud storage to its users for free. It offers file sharing for multiple devices and different users, as well as collaboration within those files, data encryption, the ability to set individual or group permissions, as well as a detailed activity report and digital asset management. The cloud storage limitations might be detrimental for some storage-heavy backup operations, but it is a great solution for smaller important files with the ability to collaborate without leaving the website in question.

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