Paragon Giveaway: Backup, Backup, Backup!

Many of us beat the backup drum quite frequently, in the hopes that others will listen, and begin backing up their systems, websites and whatnot, so they've got something to fall back on, should disaster strike.

I was given keys for a couple of Paragon applications a few months ago, so I could evaluate them, and am still in the process of doing that, but in the meantime, Paragon have announced they're giving away licences for their "Backup & Recovery Compact" and "System Backup" applications, between July 9th - 12th. If you've not got a backup facility yet - get it whilst it's free.

System Backup is the one I'm evaluating, and it's a rather nice little program, few quirks, but otherwise works just fine. All you need to do after installing it, is tell it where you want the backups stored, and it'll do it all for you (you can of course, do it manually if you like).

I've not tried "Backup & Recovery Compact", but based on it's features, I'd suggest going for the System Backup instead, as it doesn't quite fill the needs for a backup facility you're going to be needing. This is of course, speculation based on the features comparison listed here, and I'll be doing some testing when I get time, to determine whether my suspicions are correct (I don't believe there's any restrictions that would prevent you getting a copy of both?).

http://www.paragon-software.com/free/giveaway.html

I must stress folks, regardless of which backup application you use, you MUST always ensure there's more than one backup, and at least one of them MUST be on external storage*. Ideally there should be;

1. Backup image stored on CD/DVD (x 2, so one can be stored "off site")
2. Backup image stored on external HDD
3. Backup image stored on a dedicated backup partition on the internal drive

* The reason one must be on external storage, is to prevent infection of one of the backup images, should your system ever be infected, and to prevent loss of a backup, should the drive die or become seriously corrupted etc.