The best free backup software and services: Reviews and buying advice
Finding a good free backup solution is easier than you’d think. A host of companies would love to give you free online backup or free backup software—and perhaps surprisingly, nearly all of them are quite competent.
Of course these companies aren’t really in it for the satisfaction of knowing your data is safe. Their free versions usually only provide enough storage for essential data, or are lacking some advance features that pros would employ. They hope you’ll love the program or service so much, or find it so useful that you’ll eventually fork over some cash for additional storage or those advance features.
But wait, you say: I have free online storage through Apple’s iCloud or Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive. Then there are services like Dropbox, with 5GB for free.
The issue with all those services is that they’re not necessarily true backup, but syncing. That is, when you delete a file from any device or online, it’s deleted from every device. Lord help you if you make a mistake and don’t realize it in time. True backup means retaining data indefinitely no matter what’s happening with the data elsewhere.
Read on for our top picks in free online backup and free backup software, and of course the reasons why we picked them. You can get the skinny on paid backup software and online backup services by clicking those links.
HOW WE TEST FREE BACKUP SOFTWARE AND SERVICES
We run each program through the various types of backups it’s capable of. This is largely to test reliability and hardware compatibility, but we time test
