Best free back-up software

GREAT BACKUP SOFTWARE CAN BE INVALUABLE – AND SOME OF THE BEST IS AVAILABLE COMPLETELY FREE.

BACKING UP DATA isn’t exciting, but it’s important. Unfortunately, many of us only realise how crucial it is when something goes wrong – whether it’s a ransomware infection that locks you out of your files, a theft, or a hardware failure.

But where do you start? You could create a manual backup by simply copying your important files to a spare hard drive, but it makes far more sense to turn to dedicated backup software to automate the process.

A regular backup plan is especially important if you own a small business that handles other people’s personal information. Following the implementation of the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation, anyone who does business in the EU (even if they aren’t based there themselves) has an obligation to protect any data that could be used to identify someone – whether that’s their name, email address, physical address, or even their IP address.

A good backup program will let you choose exactly which data should be stored, how often, where, and whether it should be encrypted for extra security. You should also look out for a backup tool that makes recovering your data easy after a disaster.

With that in mind, we’ve put the best free backup software through its paces and picked the very best options.