Windows 7: Which is the best free backup program?

Currently I use the Windows 7 built in backup tool and I'm not too satisfied with it.
It is too slow, not enough customizable etc.
What do you use?

I remember someone recommended this.

Easy-to-use computer backup software

The programs that I use personally, are not really free but rather never-ending trial it seems.

Right here: http://www.seagate.com/support/discw...rdSetup.en.exe

it's acronis for free, some options or greyed out but you can make images of disks and partitions and it's free.

I'm not 100% sure if you need a "Seagate" drive for it to run or not.

You can open the Images and copy files or restore the whole partition with it.

If you are looking for a traditional file based backup solution you may want to have a look here ...

Free backup software for Windows - GFI Backup Home Edition

I've been using it for a while without issues, totally free for personal use

If you are looking for an "image" based solution the options are many but I personally like those on offer from Paragon software - many available for free

Hi,

Here are some free options:

Cartel already mentioned - Seagate DiskWizard/Maxblast - you must have at least 1 Seagate/Maxtor drive. You can make backup images of drives/ partitions manually. There is no scheduling. There is no file/folder backup. I found it large and heavy on resources - but hey, it's free.

Macrium Reflect Free Edition. Images Drives / partitions - allows scheduling , mounting and restoring individual files from the mounted image. There is no separate separate file/folder backup with the Free Editon. Extremely small, fast relatively light - I have found it totally reliable.

Paragon do free Drive Backup Express version on their website - does a good job and is reliable - but very limited features.

Paragon also do a free promo. version , which is much better - it images drives/ partitions, and files and folders, and includes scheduling. Not as fulll featured as their paid versions - fantastic for a free product.

It is called Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Personal SE. You might find it if you look around.

For individual file / folder backup ( not drives/partitions), GFI is well liked, as Barman58 pointed out.

Hope it helps

I've been using SyncBackSE in XP and Vista for many years without any issues. I liked it so much that I bought the payware version.

Others have like Cobian backup.

My backup tool in Windows 7 is Windows Explorer. Just not that much to save while waiting for the RTM to come out.

Exactly! For now, I've remapped day-to-day things like photos, downloads and docs to a separate drive....waiting for another build and then the final.

I've used various versions of Acronis True Image for a few years. I like it but when installed it runs a lot of schedulers and crap that can't easily be turned off. For that reason I usually just make backups from what they call "Bootable Recovery Media" which is basically the program on a Flash Drive (I put Acronis Disk Director 10 on the Flash Drive also). Like most of the not-free backup software, Acronis allows a 30-day free trial.

have any of you actually used any of these to do a full restore from backup? I used to Norton Ghost 14 with the recovery disk when I had Vista, and it worked great. I heard it does not work so well on Windows 7. So, back to the original ?, any successfull restore from backup?

I have restored numerous times with the Macrium and Paragon products - perfectly.

I'm quite happy with the Windows backup program myself, I selected what I wanted backed up and when and it just does it. I've done many clean installs of the new builds and it restores my stuff just fine. Subsequent backups save changes to your selected folders and are not as large as the initial. I don't use the imaging option, when I do a clean install I want it clean, only restore my data.