Having a backup is vital because it safeguards your data and helps you avoid data loss.
Many organizations use backup software to protect their data from security threats and losses.
Additionally, installing backup software in an organization has become much easier as it has become more user-friendly.
In this article, we will discuss the benefits of backing up company data, and we will also provide you with a list of free and open-source backup software that you can use to keep your data secure.
Importance of Securing Data
The importance of backing up data is often overlooked by organizations.
Imagine the impact on business growth if there is an accidental fire in your server room or your web server crashes. You may lose all the important information and organizational data.
Think of a phishing attack on your business. Do you have a data backup strategy?
Undoubtedly, data is a crucial asset of your organization. If you are unable to retain your data, you may lose everything.
How Does Backup Software Work?
You’ve probably heard horror stories of data loss.
What if your hard drive fails or you accidentally delete an email? What if hackers attacked your website? It’s not that hard to imagine. So, it’s crucial to realize that backing up your data is necessary and easy to do with the right cloud backup software.
Online backup software is a program that stores your data and documents in a remote location called an online backup server. Data and documents are first saved to your system’s hard disk by the backup software.
Then the online backup software will transfer the data to the online backup server. So, if your computer crashes, you do not have to worry about your data because they are in a remote location.
Nowadays, as cloud computing becomes more popular, the need for data backup is growing. You can easily find the data or documents you need in the backup server.
Benefits
#1. Data Security
One of the key reasons to back up your data is to secure your organization’s data, build a solid wall against data breaches, and stand strong against cyber attacks.
#2. Better Data Accessibility
In case of data loss, you can easily access the data from your backups present.
#3. Scalability
As your business grows, your data also keeps accumulating. In order to match your business expansion, you need to have a solid strategy to store your collected data every growing day.
#4. Data Recovery
Recovering lost data is a troublesome and time-consuming process. A preventive measure is to store data so that if there is data loss, it can be easily accessed from backed files.
#5. Improved Information Management
Good data management can save your company’s humanitarian efforts and reduce the time restoring data in case of accidental losses. Besides, sequentially stored data also helps in understanding and analysis of data in a better way which is crucial for business decisions.
For better categorization, we’ve divided our list into free and Open source categories. Let’s get started with our list of free backup software.
Zinstall FullBack
Zinstall FullBack is a widely recommended backup software that covers all the points in our benefits list, is super simple to use, and has the most versatile restore capability out there.
FullBack is unique in its ability to restore everything, not just files – including programs, profiles, settings, accounts, emails, and of course, all data – even to a completely different replacement device (different vendor, different hardware, even different Windows version).
While powerful “under the hood”, FullBack requires zero technical knowledge to use. It automates almost everything and maintains a complete backup of your computer that is always up to date.
You can choose to store your backup anywhere – external USB drive, NAS, network, or Cloud storage (and even OneDrive or Dropbox). It even allows to maintain multiple backups at the same time, such as an external drive backup and a Cloud backup. This ensures maximum efficiency and survivability, even in the case of a ransomware or hacker attack. Of course, you can also simply restore a file or folder that you accidentally deleted, and you even get to choose which point in time to rest
Wondershare UBackit is a reliable data backup software. It supports automatic (real-time, daily, weekly, monthly) and incremental backing up your files, folders, disk partitions, and hard drives. Moreover, this software will assist you in monitoring the backup process, data security, and storage space.
Its advanced Outlook backup feature lets you back up the complete Outlook data, including emails, contacts, calendars, and tasks. Apart from the above, this tool can back up NAS (Network Storage Device), you can use a NAS disk as the backup source or backup target path. And its Disk Clone feature can clone disks as well as partitions.
And besides internal storage, Wondershare UBackit can also back up external storage devices, such as HDD, SSD, USB drive, memory card, etc. Users can restore the backed-up files to their computers with three simple steps. You can run this tool on all major Windows OS versions, including Windows 11, 10, 8.1, 8, and 7. You can download it now and start using the free 1-month trial.
Iperius Backup
With Iperius Backup, you will get comprehensive and complete backup software for Windows. The free version of this software can effectively perform incremental backups of NAS, USB, RDX, disk, and network. Other features of this version include automatic backup, file compression, e-mail notifications, advanced filters, and running of external scripts.
The paid versions of the Iperius Backup tool offer additional features such as backing up drive images, FTP, and cloud. The backed-up data can be stored in platforms like Google Drive, Amazon S3, Dropbox, Azure Storage, and OneDrive.
Apart from these, this software also supports different databases, Microsoft 365, MS Exchange, VMware ESXi, and Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines for backup. This stable and affordable software protects your valuable data without interrupting the regular tasks of computer users.
You will get other features like network authentication, synchronization, installation as a service, AES encryption, and flexible backup retention policies with this application. Moreover, you can integrate this solution with a powerful console for monitoring all backups from a web panel. Before purchasing any of its paid versions, you can try out its free trial.
AOMEI Backupper
AOMEI Backupper is a data insurance company that provides free backup software for Windows operating system-based computers and servers.
It has an intuitive and simple-to-understand interface embedded with powerful features like data backup, restoration, and cloning. The best part is all this can be done within a few clicks without any technical knowledge required.
Additionally, it has all the tools to combine full backup, differential backup, custom partitions, and complete disk backups. You also get multiple options for choosing backup storage, such as external drive, flash drive, NAS, network share, and cloud.
Paragon Backup & Recovery
Paragon is a backup and recovery tool available for free if you’re choosing their community edition. It helps you back up files and even complete disks. You can set the custom backup parameters such as backup type, frequency of backups, and schedule backup frequency.
It comes with a WinPE recovery mechanism which means you’ll be able to boot the system from a USB stick to restore your entire system. Supported storage types include AFD, non-512 B sector size drives, SSD, HDD, and any kind of common optical disk device.
For advanced commercial functionalities like Windows server support, copy disks, and notifications, you can check out their hard disk manager for the business edition.
FBackup
Fbackup is a free backup software compatible with the Windows operating system. The software is available freely for personal and commercial use. It is a downloadable software that lets you create backups as soon as you install it and press the backup button.
You can create backups in zip files and store them anywhere, just like other zip archive files. The software also provides a provision to password-protect your data, making it privately accessible only to you.
FBackup also supports backing up your files and folders on cloud storage like Google Drive and Dropbox accounts. All you need to do is connect your cloud accounts to FBackup and save storage destinations.
EaseUS
EaseUS is a free backup software for windows that secures your data by creating disk backups and partition backups and saves it on local drives, hard drives, and the cloud.
Not only it provides essential backup features, but it also offers advanced features like incremental and differential backups, scheduled backups, and encrypted backups.
EaseUs is equipped with cloud backup capabilities and offers 250GB of free cloud storage to access your files without any data limitations.
Additionally, you can perform management tasks like deleting, merging, splitting and compressing your backup data. Not to mention, you can password-2 all your data with a simple click.
Iperius Backup
Iperius Backup is a free backup software that allows you to back up to a mass storage device like NAS, RDX drives, network-connected computers, and external USB hard drives. Although the free version is sufficient for personal usage, it’s also available in commercial versions.
The tool offers functions for sending and scheduling emails. By default, it has built-in support for zip compression, incremental backup, execution of external scripts, and network authentication.
You can rely on the basic version for backing up data, except no support is provided for the free version.
MiniTool ShadowMaker
MiniTool ShadowMaker ensures the safety of your files, folders, systems, disks, and partitions by backing them up to internal/external hard drives, USB drives, and shared folders.
It’s an automated backup program that saves your hard drive space by offering automatic backup options.
It’s free downloadable software and offers functionalities for restoring a system, automating file synchronization, and a safe disk cloning solution. This removes the burden of reinstalling OS, thereby increasing your system’s overall performance.
MiniTool also has an image security feature wherein it encrypts all the backed-up images. So you’ll need to enter a password to access the encrypted images.
Veeam
Veeam is a free backup and recovery software for Windows, VMWare, Linux, and NAS. It offers plenty of essential features for backing up and restoring the files from your backup. You can even create bootable copies for migration and disaster recovery.
The free version of Veeam offers free AWS-native backup that helps you save up to 10 Amazon EC2 instances making a cost-effective backup solution.
Moreover, you can opt for 10 Azure VMs or free Google-native backup that scales with your requirement without costing you any extra money.
Now that we covered the free backup software, it’s time to check our list of open-source backup options.
Bacula
Bacula is an open-source backup program for enterprise-level computer systems. It allows you to back up, restore, and verify data across heterogeneous networks. It can be configured on Windows, Linux, Unix, and MacOS backup clients.
This open-source platform is licensed under AGPL version 3. It’s designed with a combination of reliability and functionality to meet the growing requirements of data centers, MSPs, and cloud environments.
Some of the significant features of Bacula backup are instant recovery, multiple backup destinations, backup to the cloud, management dashboard, recovery verification, and retention options.
Bareos
Bareos is an open-source backup solution licensed under AGLPv3. As an open-source project, you’re assured that it will remain free and independent without any usage restrictions.
As a backup tool, Bareos stores its backed data on hard disks, tape libraries, and cloud storage. All the services are networked and authenticated with TLS/SSL encryption. It means your data is backed up using a secured transmission method, and the data itself is also encrypted.
One of the good things about Bareos is it offers professional support, training, and maintenance for your installation for a nominal fee.
UrBackup
With UrBackup, you can create an easy-to-use open-source client/server backup system, which combines image and file backups to ensure data safety and fast restoration. Backups are made while the system runs without interrupting current processes, making the process faster.
UrBackup server is currently available for Windows, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, and several Linux-based NAS operating systems. The software comes with an easy-to-configure web interface that displays the status of clients’ running activities and statistics. It also backups your computer while you’re using it without affecting your system speed.
UrBackup is licensed under AGPLv3+. You can use and redistribute the software as long as you adhere to the open-source usage terms.
Duplicati
Duplicati 2.0 is a free backup software that works with standard protocols like FTP, SSH, and WebDAV. It supports many popular services like Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, Amazon S3, Mega, Backblaze, and many more.
To protect your privacy, Duplicati uses AES-256 encryption. With incremental backups and data deduplication, you can backup files and folders with strong AES-256 encryption while saving space.
Duplicati is licensed under LGPL, and since it’s open-source software, you can use it for commercial purposes. It’s designed for online backups from scratch, and the web interface works with all the popular browsers. Moreover, it operates efficiently on Windows, Linux, and MacOS.
FreeFileSync
FreeFileSync creates and manages backup copies of all your important files by comparing and synchronizing folders. Synchronization is fast and can be automated by creating batch jobs, so you can always have your important files backed up in a second location without using a cloud service.
Rather than copying every file each time, FreeFileSync determines the differences between source and target folders and transfers only the necessary information. Windows, macOS, and Linux are supported by FreeFileSync.
Final Words
Data is considered an essential asset in today’s business, and backing up and securing data is even more important. Although there are many premium backup solutions available, there are many free and open-source backup software that you can get started.
Our intention with this article was to list top backup software so you can find one that works well for your business and data security.
Next, you can check out the detailed guide on cloud backup vs. local backup.
