Windows Backup Software Review

With computers and electronic data being a vital aspect of society, keeping all of your data safe is essential. Windows backup software guarantees your data's safety, even if its hardware fails. As with many utility software programs, choosing the right program for your specific needs can be difficult at times. Whether you want to backup all your documents or keep your music and pictures safe, there is Windows backup software for you.

In this comparison, you’ll be able to evaluate data backup programs including NovaBACKUP, Backup4All and Genie Backup Manager. These programs include features such as scheduling, encryption, compression and online backup options. You can read through the articles on Windows backup software to learn more about the programs in this category. At TopTenREVIEWS We Do the Research So You Don't Have To.™

Windows Backup Software: What to Look For

When searching for suitable Windows backup software, there are several factors to take into account. We used the following criteria to compare the best Windows backup software.

Backup & Restore Options
Windows backup software needs to do just as it name suggests. If the software can’t reliably back up files or is limited in the source and destination options, it isn’t an application to risk your data to. Products that can save to or from external devices (such as external hard drives, CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, USB drives), network drives and even FTP sites ranked higher. The more options there are, the more likely you’ll be able to keep your data safe in the case of a system failure. Something else we looked at was the backup system types. We ranked Windows backup software that performed full, mirror, incremental and differential backups higher.

Feature Set
Not only is the act of saving and retrieving data important, but scheduling, compression and encryption are also important factors. If you can schedule a routine system backup, you don’t have to worry about remembering to do it every so many days. Compression is an important feature because it means you don’t need as much storage space for your data. If there is no compression available, you'll need at least the same amount of storage space as hard drive space, especially if you want to keep multiple versions. Encryption is used to keep your data secure so other people can’t access it. We considered all of these features when ranking Windows backup software.

Ease of Use
For many people, if the computer backup software they choose isn’t easy to use, it won’t be used. We checked each application's usability and whether referring to the manual or help files was required for common tasks. Some programs are geared for the more tech-savvy users, while other applications explain everything step by step. The programs with friendly user interfaces and options for both groups of users were ranked higher than other backup software.

Help & Support
Even the simplest data backup program can have issues in the long run. We wanted to make sure our questions and concerns could be answered. We looked at the help offered in the program itself as well as the support on the company's website. Programs with specific instructions in the help and a website with multiple forms of support ranked higher.

There’s a lot of Windows backup software on the market. Make sure you look through all of the options and capabilities before trusting one to keep your data safe in the face of all that could go wrong.