Paragon Backup & Recovery Review

One of the key features of Paragon Backup & Recovery CE is its ability to make full disk and system backups with ease, something which is especially worthy of mention given that this software is completely free for personal use.

Starting off with the creation of a new backup set (found under the “My Backups” section) and, having set a meaningful name, the first task is specifying what of type of backup is to be made. As can be seen above, we have the option to make a full system image backup (which will include all relevant disks and partitions for the current system) or, alternatively, backup individual disks and partitions or individual files with a file-based approach.

NB – Whilst backing up individual files and folders is often faster and more disk space efficient, full disk and system image backups are often the best way of ensuring all data on a device is included within the backup set.

Having chosen the “Disks/Volumes” option to back up a system disk, the next step in the process is selecting the necessary disks and partitions to be included. As can be seen below, Backup & Recovery CE provides a useful graphical interface which makes easy the selection and omission of these individual disks and partitions as required.

Having now selected the necessary disks and partitions, the next step in the process is selecting the backup destination (target storage) to be used. As can be seen below, the software allows the choosing of local folders, external storage drives or even network attached storage (including NAS devices) if this is required.

With the destination storage specified, the application will adjust to show the additional configuration options available (see below). From here we can specify an optional schedule and specify the historic version retention policy if this is required (by default, the backup set will keep historic versions indefinitely which will most likely need revising if limited destination disk space is available).

Focusing on the scheduling configuration and Backup and Recovery CE provides support for making daily, weekly and monthly backups with additional support for running a daily backup at multiple intervals (e.g. every 3 hours) making for a slightly more advanced scheduling tool than is first apparent. In addition to these basic timescale-based options, the software also supports backing up manually (the default option) as well as on events such as the system booting up and a Windows user logging in (which can also have a maximum number of runs set – e.g. only once per day).

The next element of this new backup set to configure is the backup methodology being used. As can be seen above, we have options for making full backups every time, full and incremental backup chains plus full and differential backup chains as well.

Whilst making full backups each and every time is often the most reliable option, it is also the least efficient use of destination disk space. Incremental backups are more disk space efficient (and usually run faster) but suffer the disadvantage that losing a single incremental file will render the entire backup chain useless. Differential backups are more reliable than incremental backups (only the full backup file and the latest differential file are required for recovery) and can often form a good compromise.

In my own example I will be using incremental backups with a chain size of 10 incremental backups being taken in-between each full backup. Having specified this methodology, the next step is to set the storage retention period for the new backup set as can be seen below.

In this part of the process we can specify that historic versioning is based upon a set number of days (e.g. 90 days as in my example above), a set number of full backup chains, for as long as the destination storage allows (deleting only when the destination drive is full) or simply retaining forever which is the default option.

Moving on and, as can be seen above, the backup options tab allows for even more advanced options to be configured. This includes being able to specify the file format, the level of data compression used, the backup splitting file size as well as the ability to specify that other applications run before or after the backup job itself runs.

NB – When choosing to split the resultant data files, Paragon supports using custom sizes in addition to being able to select commonly used file sizes including 4.7GB for easily writing to CD/DVD media.

Focusing on the file format (see above) and it is useful to see Paragon including support for VHD, VHDX and VMDK (VMWare) virtual disk formats alongside their own proprietary format. Whilst this might not seem too significant at first glance, it does mean Backup & Recovery CE is ideal for advanced PC users looking to work with their backups alongside virtual environments or for more advanced recovery purposes such as being able to mount a virtual disk file as a drive within Windows.

Finally, whilst the button for setting notifications is available on the backup set configuration page, this particular setting is reserved for the premium version of the tool (found in Paragon Hard Disk Manager Advanced). At this point the new backup set is configured and read to go and, after clicking on “Backup now”, the initial run will commence.

During the running of the backup (see above) a detailed progress screen will be shown detailing the progress of the operation and providing an estimated completion time. Once complete, this same view remains with a summary of the job just run and the time taken to complete.