Definitive Best Back-up Software 2020

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

 

This is the Definitive Best Back-up Software 2020 official thread and covers free and commercial backup software, as well as those built into or bundled with operating systems.  Use this as a starting point for researching back-up software.
 
The 2019 thread can be found here.
 
If your choice of back-up software is not listed, please choose Other and specify it in the comments.  The poll is multiple choice, so if you use more than one solution, you can check all of them, be sure to mention which ones you use in the comments. 
  
Regards, 
  
Aryeh Goretsky

[+Jester124 Subscriber²]

In the past I would have said CrashPlan as I both used them through schooling and previously worked for them. They are no longer in the consumer market and are focused on Small Business and Enterprise only and have also made a push to focus on cyber security going forward. Since the exit from consumer side (and no longer getting Small Business for free), I have switched to a combination of OneDrive for main cloud storage and rSync for incremental backups to a local HDD.

[ThaCrip]

I think stuff is sort of conflicting a bit on the poll as say Clonezilla vs Google Drive for example... I like both but they are different as Clonezilla is good basic hard drive imaging software where as something like Google Drive is good for backing up some files occasionally since it's got 15GB (I got 17GB) which is decent for those who just need some storage space online but nothing major. so they are sort of in a difference class of backup.

 

but I like Clonezilla as you just burn the ISO to CD-RW (or the like) or make a bootable USB drive etc and reboot PC and it will work. but I do think there is a small learning curve with it (since while it's not hard to use, as anyone half way decent with computers should have no trouble using it, I could see an average person struggling to use it since it's not super straight forward) as I suspect other software of similar type, like say Macrium Reflect for example, will be a bit easier for the common person since you can run it from within Windows etc (although one would still need to create the bootable CD/DVD/USB in order to restore something if Windows is not bootable for example).

 

since I am on Linux Mint it has 'Timeshift' with it which is good for occasional use but it does eat up storage space fairly quickly which is why I just do an occasional manual image but once my system is in good running order I usually will delete all Timeshift images and reboot PC and image the boot drive to a file on another hard drive with Clonezilla maybe once or twice a month.

 

so I guess ill vote for Clonezilla at the moment as I see something like Google Drive mostly good for small file backup here and there as for general data backup I tend to use hard drives and preferably external. but I figure at the very least, one should have a bare minimum of two copies of their semi-important/important data on two different hard drives as even if they are both internal, they could be potentially at risk for viruses(mainly if one is on Windows), at least you got pretty good protection against hardware failure as I would imagine the chances of both hard drives dying at the same time is minimal (maybe some sort of power surge could take them both out(?) but I suspect if you use a decent PSU, I would imagine this is not likely to happen (at least this seems to be the case in my experience with dead PSU's in that they just die and you swap the PSU and your PC is good again)). NOTE: but for higher importance stuff like family vids/photos, I usually burn to DVD in addition to the two hard drive stuff etc (with external hard drive copies to). but I will admit, I do slack a bit on burning stuff to DVD but I still have a good portion of it backed up. but in general... since people tend to be a bit lazy when it comes to data backup, it's likely a matter of time before you get burned if you don't have at least two different copies of your important data on two separate hard drives as that's what I consider a bare minimum protection against data loss.