Choosing The Best Free Data Backup For You

If you work with computers for more than two days, you know the importance of backing up your data. Files can mysteriously disappear overnight, valuable documents can be lost during a power outage and laptops can break. So, you know you need to use a data backup program. You might feel relived to know that there are free data backup programs. But how do you choose which is the best free data backup for you?

Questions To Ask Yourself

Before shopping for the best free data backup software, you need to ask yourself a couple of questions in order to help narrow the selections. How many computers do you need backing up? Is this for personal needs or business needs? If for a business, how big is your business? And do you want the data backed up on your own discs or on a website (called remote data backup)? Or would you prefer free automatic data backup?

How Old Is the Program?

If you take a peek at many shareware websites, you’ll see a lot listed as the best free data backup by IT professionals, industry writers and customers like you. But one of the things you need to check is how old this “best” free data backup shareware is. PC World’s website cites one of their picks as best free data backup shareware programs, EZBackItUp, as being from 2004. That means that no one has updated this program since 2004. It may not run for computers or operation systems made after 2004.

How Easy Is The Interface?

Once you download a data backup program, it should be easy to learn. The interface should make some sort of sense. If you are still trying to learn the interface after more than an hour, than you really need to consider deleting this program and trying another. If you use Windows, you can easily delete the program by hitting the “Start” button and then clicking on “Control Panel”, although it may take a while for the program to delete.

Do A Trial Run

One of the best ways to check if a program is the best free data backup for you is to download it and then have it save only one type of file or perhaps all of your pictures. After that, turn off your computer and reboot. Then, see if you can find what you just saved. If you are still searching after an hour, then that’s a good indication that this program is not for you.