The best free file backup software: GFI Backup Home Edition
August 13, 2011 87
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In my article on FBackup I just ranted about how I am obsessed with Titan Backup. Well let me tell you my affair with Titan Backup is over; we are done – I broke up. I found myself a new love which comes in the name of GFI Backup Home Edition:
Does the interface for GFI Backup look familiar? Oh yes… now I remember: it looks just like Titan Backup! GFI Backup is literally the same thing as Titan Backup (Titan Backup is the predecessor of GFI Backup) with one difference: GFI Backup Home Edition is now free for home users. So instead of downloading old, outdated versions of Titan Backup, you can use new, free versions of GFI Backup.
To give you a run down of why I say GFI Backup is the best free file backup software, here is what GFI Backup has/can do:
- Nice clean, easy to use interface
- Backup registry and files/folders (including backup specific program data via pre-installed plugins)
- Apply filters or “masks” to your backup jobs to include/exclude specific files types
- Ability to backup files that are currently in use (via VSS)
- Backup to a local folder, external hard drive, network folder, portable device, CD/DVD or over FTP
- Create incremental, differential or stacked backups, compress your backups (ZIP64), and protect your backups with .ZIP level password protection or AES 256 encryption
- Automatically do backups with the “scheduler” including at Windows shutdown or boot
- Run a task before the backup, after the backup and shutdown/log off/sleep/hibernate computer after backup has finished
- Restore full backup or individual files/folders
- Sync the files and folders between two locations (two local locations or one local and one external such as network folder, USB, FTP, etc.)
- Ability to run GFI Backup as a service
Pretty impressive features for a free program huh? Nothing more I can ask for in a file backup program except maybe the ability to backup email from online email services (such as Gmail or Hotmail) and an open platform for plugin development. Forget Titan Backup and forget FBackup (unless of course FBackup has a plugin that GFI Backup does not) – time to get GFI Backup.
The only downside to GFI Backup is that you must fill out a short form (first name, last name and email address) in order to download it. No biggie though - if you feel too violated of your privacy you can enter fake names and email addresses because you will get a download link directly on your screen after you submit your info. However consider using real information (at least real email) so you can avoid having to register every time you want to download from GFI. You can grab GFI Backup Home Edition from the following link:
***GFI Backup Home Edition System Requirements:
- Intel Pentium III processor or above
- 256 MB RAM (512 MB RAM recommended)
- 8 MB free hard drive space
- Windows XP Home, Windows XP Professional SP2, SP3 (x86 and the x64 versions) and all editions of Windows Vista except for Vista Starter (x86 and the x64 versions)
While officially Windows 7 is not supported, people have reported it is working just fine in Win7.
About the author: Ashraf View all posts by Ashraf
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@mukhi:
I think I understood what incremental and differential are…My point was that, strangely enough, that is not what the GFI and TITAN HELP say….:-)….
I have done some homework as well…Get this:
I had a GFI backup of a 1.2GB folder. The source is on ext HD H:\ and the backup is on ext HD I:\….I was pleased to see that this gave me not only the the .gbt backup file, but also a full mirror (so I can se what’s what)….Well, I did an incremental AND differential backup, and GFT told me it was “completed successfully”. Just to be sure, I checked it out on SwiftCompare (my sync prog) and guess what…files were missing!!!! So now I am wondering how far down into subfolders GFI goes, as the missing files were in folders quite a few levels down….
Ashraf: GFI’s HELP also says that incremental backup includes “version control”, but I didn’t see any….Wouldn’t it just be the stacked backups that have version control?
@Ashraf:
my source is P and destination is Q. what GFI is doing is that it is making a “mybackup…” folder, inside this, it is making another “mybackup…” folder, inside this, it is creating P folder and copying the contents of the source right there. i don’t want that! since my contents exist in the destination in the P folder (which is inside the 1st “mybackup…” folder, which, in turn, is inside the root), GFI is creating another “extra” copy in the “wrong” place! i tried the other way as well. i put my contents in the destination inside the 2nd “mybackup…” folder and then run GFI. still failure. but titan 1.5 is not doing this mistake.
@mukhi: Ohhhh I see. This may have been a new change made after v1.5. Do you mind reporting this to GFI and see if they can fix it?
@Ashraf:
i think i should report. i now remember, i actually went to their forum some time before, and i believe they asked me for a log, but i forgot about this! ok, will do again.
your site is making me switch to free (good) SW from fishy, cracked SW…LOL…i appreciate it!
I seem to recall that in Titan you had an option not to create the path in the backup but rather just the folder itself, but I can’t find that setting in GFI….
Well, it’s a few months later…..I wanted to let readers know that I have verified (from GFI) that GFI Backup doesn’t have UNICODE support and consequently that GFI DOES NOT BACK UP files in foreign languages with non-Latin character sets!!! No backups for files in Hebrew/Arabic/Chinese/Japanese/etc etc.!!!
Following on Janet’s first msg, I’ve done tests with various backup software, especially testing for integrity in incremental backup results. I’ve been very disappointed most times to find that backup files are indeed missing in subfolders even though the operation was reported by the software as ‘successful’.
I advise everyone to always run thorough tests on their chosen backup software when using the ‘incremental’ function to make sure that their files have actually been backed up.
I found that the errors got worse with larger backups over 1Gb. So test on something pretty big if you want to use the software for serious backups.
*Errors are unlikely to show up in small-sized tests.
It also pays to regularly run a fresh full backup which will iron out the errors of the unreliable incremental backups.
Best to know up front what your backup software is capable of before investing your faith in it.
This would be IDEAL if it didn’t require you to turn over your email address to them.
You can download GFI Home BAckup 2009 free edition here, without having to register or turn your email over.
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/gfibackup.html
@Sunny:
Which softwares had the problem of incomplete backups? GFI? How on earth can one check each time you do a backup of a large folder with many subfolders??? If you backup My Documents, would you have to open two windows–one with the original and one of the backup and go thru file by file in folder by folder to see if they were all there…?
Does this software use the archive bit? If so, and if you have more than one such backup program in use on your computer, your incremental backups could easily miss files.
GFI is rubbish !! Lost some of my precious data when synching with an external drive.
I am darn PISS OFF with GFI !!!!
No system image backups and no bootable media support .
That’s a big no to me !
Ashraf – I am running an eMachine w/ (according to Glary)
Processor : AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 235e Processor
Memory : 2048MB(Speed 400)
Mother Board : MCP61PM-GM
Windows Version : Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Monitor : Generic PnP Monitor
Video Adapter : NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE nForce 430
(which is a fine setup) and is x64 version. GFI seems to be working as intended.
Keep up the good work and thanks to the GOATD team – Tom
I am probably what you all call computer iliterate-I am just looking for something to back up my computer as I take online classes so I have something to replace if I have another computer crash-is this what I am looking for?, or is there something else simple and easy to understand for me? Thanks Kim
@Kimra: Ken, you asked for it.
I recommend two approaches, and you can do both if you like.
BACKING UP YOUR DATA FILES
There is a folder called Documents and Settings
If you came to Australia, and found a giant wombat, and you gave it Rabies.
The mineshaft that it would dig, would be as wide, and as deep as Texas.
The closest thing you can find to that (if you don’t come to Australia), is the ‘Documents and Settings’ folder.
And to compound the problem, MS insists on saving all your files, somewhere in the mineshaft.
And because they realize that Davy Crockett could not locate the files, they came up with mythical Bullsh.. folders like ‘My Documents’ and ‘My Pictures’ which actually are buried deep down the mineshaft.
This is what I recommend, to make backing up of your Data files, easier -
Avoid Documents and Settings like the plague.
Create folders in your C drive all proceeded with say B_
So you might have -
c:\B_DVD
c:\B_Excel
c:\B_Health
c:\B_Money
c:\B_Web
etc.
You can create sub folders in those.
You can train (or use Settings) your applications to store your Files in those folders.
To make life easier, I also have a folder called c:\Downloads
Many of my programs are trained to only save into there.
Then when I have the time, I move them out of there, into the appropriate c:\B_ folders.
I save all my web pages (.mht) into there. And if there were related downloads (.zip), they also are saved into there.
There is a free program called XYPlorerFree that has Tabs.
You can set one of the Tabs to c:\Downloads, and have that Tab sorted by Date (most recent at the top). That means when you come to move files out of downloads, they will all be clumped together, by the Date and Time you saved/downloaded them.
You can lock that Tab so it is always on c:\Downloads, and it is always sorted by Date.
Now the end result of all this is – You can readily back up your data files to a CD.
Even when you are drunk, you cannot make a mistake, when pointing your CD burner software to them.
BACKING UP THE WHOLE DRIVE
Buy a Docking station. It is like an upturned ashtray, or breakfast bowl.
You shove an internal 3.5″ Seagate Sata drive into it, vertically.
It can connect to your PC via a cable (USB or eSata).
Download the free Seagate DiscWizard program, and burn the ISO to a CD.
That CD is bootable, so when you start your PC, with the CD in the CD drive, it will boot into the DiscWizard.
You then choose the option to create an image of your whole drive.
After it does that (10 to 60 minutes later), there is an option to verify the image, which I always run.
You now have a file on your external drive that can be used to ‘Restore’ the full contents of your drive, to a new drive, or even to a new PC (I can elaborate on that trick, for you).
This will now protect you from -
- Screwed up Windows
- Dying hard drive
- Theft of PC
I have used that DiscWizard for over a year now, and found it extremely reliable.
I had trouble in the beginning, which I put down to me stuffing around with the image files. So here are my ‘Rules’ for not stuffing with the image files -
Choose the location (Folder name on your ‘external’ drive) carefully, and NEVER rename or move it.
The same rule applies to the image file. Never move or rename it.
As a footnote, you can also use the latter (image of your drive), instead of the former (burning Data files to a CD).
Normally I do not Install the DiscWizard on to my PC. I just use the bootable CD.
However if you do install it (as well as having a bootable CD), you can use the installed program, to browse within any previous image. This allows you to find, and copy, anything/anywhere from your hard drive’s images.
I don’t really recommend that you do that, instead of the CD backups. It is just nice to know that the files you do not normally back up, can also be retrieved, if needed.
Rob
PS my PCs are about 6 years old. I downloaded the latest DiscWizard, and it had some trouble ‘seeing’ my drives.
I have reverted to using, my trusted copy (May 2009).
If your PCs are old, we can work out a way to get a copy to you.
Also XYPlorerFree is hard to get, but I can give you (all) a link to a web site, that hosts ‘old versions’ of software (aka ‘Last Free Versions’).
PS Kim, you don’t mind if I call you Ken ?
My brain was a bit fatigued, after typing all of that, for you.
@Mario:
use of multiple !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and ??????????? hardly proclaims emotional stability, does it?
I am using Acronis (twice a week) and Syncback (for data every evening), what does this soft brings that could be more useful or interesting?
@Merlin: I reckon what you are doing is MAGIC enough
@Rob (Down Under):
Magic Merlin says Thank you Rob.
I honestly think Microsoft Sync Toy is the best in syncing.(But no multiple volume splittig or writing to write-only media tho)
I use the same for backup in the foward only mode..
You will never regret reviewing it :) Its fast simple and has all the featres i was looking in a syncing programme..
Ah and its also Free..
Hi,
no plugin available in my installation. noting about plugin on the GFI website (features etc)
how can i install when it asks password?