Home Backup Software

[goobernoodles]

Can I get some suggestions/opinions on a decent, preferably cheap option for home backups?

It needs to be able to:

1) Create image files for restoring the entire machine.
2) File level access
3) Incremental backups (preferably delete old backups after a certain age)
4) Scheduled backups

Backups would go to either a drive dedicated to backups or an external drive. (If bundled software with an external drive works well, that could do it)

Is Acronis less of a piece of shit these days?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Macrium is excellent. There's a free version and a paid version. I think you need the paid version if you want to do incrementals---although I'd try to avoid incrementals unless you have an over-riding need for them. I think scheduling would have to be done via Windows Task Scheduler.

There might be a tool with built-in scheduling, but I haven't researched that.

Aomei Backupper is getting some good mentions too.

Acronis was problematic for me 5 or 6 years ago, so I gave up on it.

Paragon's tools are generally excellent also. I use their partitioning stuff and haven't really checked out their backup software.

I don't use imaging other than for my Windows partition. For data backup, I use FreeFileSync from sourceforge.net. No problems with it.

 

[goobernoodles]

Macrium is excellent. There's a free version and a paid version. I think you need the paid version if you want to do incrementals---although I'd try to avoid incrementals unless you have an over-riding need for them. I think scheduling would have to be done via Windows Task Scheduler.

There might be a tool with built-in scheduling, but I haven't researched that.

Aomei Backupper is getting some good mentions too.

Acronis was problematic for me 5 or 6 years ago, so I gave up on it.

Paragon's tools are generally excellent also. I use their partitioning stuff and haven't really checked out their backup software.

I don't use imaging other than for my Windows partition. For data backup, I use FreeFileSync from sourceforge.net. No problems with it.

This would be for my dad, which is why I'm leery of recommending Acronis for him. I use it for imaging drives and it breaks occasionally mainly due to licensing. I've had to clean everything off my computer and re-install numerous times. Way too fragile and unnecessarily complex for what it does.

I'll download the trial of Macrium.

 

[Muadib]

What do you mean that it breaks due to licensing? I've used it since I've been on win 8, and never had an issue.

 

[goobernoodles]

What do you mean that it breaks due to licensing? I've used it since I've been on win 8, and never had an issue.

As in I open up Acronis to make an image or image a drive and it wouldn't let me saying I didn't have a legit license. I'd open the locally installed license manager; it would still be installed and say that it's in use. IIRC sometimes I'd simply have to remove and re-add the license. Other times a complete uninstall and reinstall of all Acronis software was necessary.

It did this crap numerous times. It hasn't happened in a while, but I saw numerous threads on their forums about it.

E: By the way, I'm using Acronis Backup and Recovery 10. Maybe a newer version solved the issues.

 

[tcsenter]

Windows backup and restore included with all the Home Premium and higher editions since Vista?

 

[xSauronx]

Windows backup and restore included with all the Home Premium and higher editions since Vista?

does that do incrementals, and auto-delete old backups?
symantec system recovery desktop is 40 or 50 bucks and will do what you need. its reliable...but probably overkill for your dad.

id be more inclined to sync pictures and documents online with onedrive, googledrive, or crashplan, and not bother backing up the whole pc unless there is a lot of special software installed.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Can I get some suggestions/opinions on a decent, preferably cheap option for home backups?

It needs to be able to:

1) Create image files for restoring the entire machine.
2) File level access
3) Incremental backups (preferably delete old backups after a certain age)
4) Scheduled backups

I use Terabyte Unlimited'd Image for Windows/Linux/DOS

The Windows version is VERY configurable. It can do full images, changes only, scheduled backups, 256-bit encryption, validation, comes with a utility to mount the images as file-systems to pull out individual files, and is widely compatible with a large number of file systems.

The linux version is fully bootable as well.

It's free-to-try to boot.