Backup and Restore must be a integral part of everyone who keeps some amount of critical data on his system. The reason, the data can be lost due to different factors like Virus infection, system crash, hardware failure or theft.Even if you don’t have some critical data on your system, still you need to have a proper back and restore strategy so that you can get your system back and running again in minimal time without losing any thing including installed applications on your system.Today we will be talking about Backup4all Pro which is a excellent backup and restore tool.

Developers Description

Backup4all is a backup program for Windows that protects your data from partial or total loss. It automates the backup process saving you time, compresses the data to save storage space (using standard zip format) and encrypts your backup to protect from unauthorized usage.

Simple Wizard Interface

First thing that you will notice after installing it on your system is that it has a simple Wizard type Interface or GUI. It will give you two simple choices i.e Backup or Restore. You can just choose what you want to do and proceed. You will be guided with simple Wizard interfaces along the process which are quite easy to understand even for novice users. You can change the view of the main GUI to show either backups, Explore view, statistics about your backups and restore, or the summary just by using the drop-down or shortcut keys.

Even if you click on the advance mode , the interface is quite simple with each option being categorized well to help you understand them better. You can easily choose the different options and configure them as per your needs. But my advice to everyone including average users, stick to the Wizard interface.

Backup to Local, Network, FTP or SFTP

You can backup your system data to either your existing local hard disk or USB drive or back them up on any other location on your Network or use a FTP or SFTP location depending on your requirement.

Four Backup Types

It provides you option of  full backup, differential backup, incremental backup and mirror backup which provides you backup solution for everything you need for different situations.

Full backup is the starting point for all other backups and contains all the data in the folders and files that are selected to be backed up (source data). Since it will store all files and folders, frequent full backups result in faster and simpler restore operations in comparison with other backup types.

Differential backup contains all files that have changed since the last FULL backup. The advantage of a differential backup is that it shortens restore time compared to a full backup or an incremental backup. However, if you perform the differential backup too many times, the size of the differential backup might grow to be larger than the baseline full backup.

Incremental backup stores all files changed since the last FULL, DIFFERENTIAL OR INCREMENTAL backup. The advantage of an incremental backup is that it takes the least time to finish. The disadvantage is that during a restore operation, each increment is processed and this could result in a lengthy restore job

Mirror backup is identical to a full backup, with the exception that the files are not compressed in zip files and they can not be protected with a password. A mirror backup is most frequently used to create an exact copy of the backup data. It has the benefit that the backup files can also be readily accessed using tools like Windows Explorer.

Plugin for almost Every Application

It has backup plugins available for almost every application for  backing up or restoring specific programs’ settings or other custom data (like game saves, email data, etc.). It includes plugins for even Antivirus applications like ESET and AVG apart from loads of other applications. Just use any of these plugins if you want to backup just the individual application settings and custom data.

Compression with AES Encryption

All the backups can be compressed and encrypted with up to 256 bit AES encryption. It uses ZIP64 technology which lets you unlimited zip file size and encrypt your data (even greater than 2 GB file size) using AES encryption (256-bits).

Backup Even Open Files and Applications

It can even backup the open files and application without the need to close them. It is made possible using the  Volume Shadow Copy service. The feature is good in situations when you are working on some of the applications while the backup is done.

Track File Versions during Restore

During the restore process using its step by step wizard, you can choose the version of files which will be restored and filter them to restore only the needed versions. Keep in mind that file version feature applies to full, differential and incremental backups only & Mirror backup. You can quickly restore the latest version of a file/folder as well as restoring versions of files backed up at a specific date.

Scheduler and Auto Backup

You can schedule the backups so that it starts at a particular time or day of the week so that backups are done automatically.

Security

In addition to the encryption of the backup we talked about earlier, you can even lock the interface of the application using a password so that no one else can access it.

Split Backups to small files

If your backups are large, you can split them into small files so that they fit easily into your backup media.

Drawback

I was unable to find any option to backup your boot partition using the boot option so that you can even backup your whole operating system along with all the applications installed on it.  It cant be used to restore your whole operating system. Someone can correct me if I am wrong here.

Giveaway

Thanks to Back4all, we are giving away 15 license keys of Backup4all Pro to readers of Avinashtech. Just follow the simple rules below to enter in this draw.

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  3. Tell us using comments, why you would like to have a license for this application.
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