best complete backup software for pc/mac

Best Complete Backup / Full Disk Backups

This contains every bit of data on the drive and offers stronger protection, since it enables you to recreate a system after a hard drive failure.

We may earn affiliate commissions from buying links, which help support our testing.

Best Complete Backup / Full Disk Backups

Acronis True Images full disk backups, fast performance, and useful extras such as active file protection, make it well worth the cost.

ShadowProtect Desktop, the consumer version of the leading enterprise-level backup software, is the most reliable disk-imaging local backup software available.

NovaBackup is a solid local backup solution with a good set of security features and customization options, but its not as intuitive as top competitors and it lacks ransomware protection.

Paragon has finally created a backup utility thats accessible to home users, but the product still lacks some usability and tools of the competition.

Genie Timeline Home is easy-to-use, capable backup software that lets you get back to previous file versions and folders.

NTI Backup Now 6s interface is improved, and it can protect your PCs folders and files, including system files, but it falls short of the competition when it comes to usability and speed of some operations.

If it can happen to a big corporation like Delta, dont think it cant happen to you.

All technology, whether its a brand new iMac, a spaceship, a hover board, a webmail service, or a ten-year-old PC running Windows Vista, can potentially take a sudden nosedive.

Sometimes its not even the fault of the technology: Fires, flooding, and other natural disasters can render PCs and other tech hardware inoperable.

You need insurance.

With digital content becoming paramount for not only business assetsdocuments, plans, financial spreadsheetsbut also for personal assets such as family photos, videos, and music, protecting with backup software is more important than ever.

Windows 10 (139.00 at Microsoft Store) includes a File History feature and a full disk backup feature, and OS X includes its Time Machine software.

Both of these are well worth running, but they both have some limitations, lacking some of the extra benefits you get from running standalone backup software.

That storage can be another drive, an external drive, a NAS, a rewritable disc, or an online storage and syncing service.

Should you lose the files, either through disaster or simply by deleting them or overwriting them, you can just restore them from the saved copies.

Most backup software lets you schedule scans of your hard drive for new and changed files daily, weekly, or monthly, but my preferred option is to have the software continually (or at least, say, every 15 minutes) monitor your drive for changed or new files.

The first is pretty obviousall the data youve selected for backup is copied in its entirety.

With incremental, you need the latest full backup and all the intermediary backup data to restore a file to its original state, whereas with differential, you just need the last set of differential backup data and the first full one.

Using both of these is a good idea if the data youre backing up is at all sensitive.

Another option offered by many backup applications is versioning.

This lets you specify how many previous versions of your files you want to preserve, and for how long.

I recommend maxing this out, especially when youre storing backups locally, with no annual fee for hosted online backup.

Best Complete Backup Software For Pc/Mac