Backup personal files and program settings, with FBackup
FBackup is one of the best free backup tools available, and is free for both personal and commercial use. It saves data to any USB / Firewire device, local or network location. The data can be either compressed (using standard zip compression) or an exact copy of the original files (mirror). FBackup features a simple interface and guides you through the process of defining a backup job using a friendly wizard, asking where to store the backup (the destination), what you want to backup (the sources), How you want to run the backup (using full backup that zips the files, or mirror backup that doesn’t zip them), when you want to run the backup (you can schedule it to run automatically or not). You can exclude sub-folders or filter files you need to backup.
Once a backup job is defined you can run it manually by pressing the Backup button, or if you added a scheduler it will run automatically. FBackup can easily backup sources from local drives (including USB connected drives) to destinations such as USB / Firewire connected devices or mapped network locations. It creates either standard zip files (when using the full backup type), or exact copies of the original sources without any compression (using the mirror backup type).
For each backup job you can define an action to execute before or after the backup. For instance, you can set a “Clear backup” action before the backup runs, so that all the previous backed up files will be cleared before loading the new ones. As an after-backup action, you can set it to stand by, log off, hibernate or even shut down the computer once the backup is successfully finished.
By default the location where your backups are stored is the local Windows partition. To be sure you have a secure backup, you’ll need to store the backups on other destinations, such as an external USB/Firewire drive, or a mapped network drive. You can load plugins for backing up or restoring specific program settings or other custom data (like game saves, email data, etc.). Once loaded in FBackup, these plugins will add in the Predefined Backups a list of the sources needed to be backed up for that particular program.
If a file is in use by another program at the time of the backup, FBackup will still be able to back up that file, because it uses the Volume Shadow Service that Windows provides. For instance, you will be able to back up your Outlook emails and settings without closing first the program.
