Can you Recommend Some Good Backup Software?

We are not in a position to officially "recommend" or "suggest" any particular backup software.  All software has the potential of having flaws, and as such we do not wish to be held responsible for making recommendations on software that could end up hurting your business, no matter how slim the chance.

That being said, we are listing below a number of FREE windows-based backup programs that can easily be downloaded from the internet.  We highly suggest you do your homework and check for reviews of any of these products before deciding to use one.  We publish this list as a courtesy, but do not officially recommend or support any of the below programs.  Use them at your own risk.

INTEGRATED BURNING

These first few backup apps have a feature of burning backups directly to optical media.  So you can burn a weekly backup directly to a CD or DVD.

Comodo Backup - http://backup.comodo.com/

They do make than a great firewall. Comodo Backup is an excellent free solution. It has extremely flexible scheduling and notification options, supports FTP destinations, can burn multisession DVDs, and has a synchronization mode for quick realtime backups.

DFIncBackup - http://www.dfincbackup.net/freeware.htm

As is the case with most backup applications, there's a free and paid version. The free one still handles CD/DVD backups, and it also does incremental .zip jobs as well - only backing up files that have changed or weren't present in your previous job.

SE Backup - http://simplyeng.com/seb/

Sports a very simple interface, does CD and DVD burning and compression, and is available as a portable application. Scheduling isn't built in, but it supports command line launching with parameters which works very well with Windows' own Task Scheduler.

FILE COPY

These programs will back up your data to other locations.  Some support only local and network drives, while some allow you to back up to an FTP or even to Cloud-based solutions.  Please note that FTP and Cloud solutions will require accounts with a provider of such services.

Areca - http://areca.sourceforge.net/

Free, open source, and quite powerful. Areca is loaded with features: compression, encryption, simulation, merging, transaction commit/rollback, filtering, and more. It's command line interface provides excellent automation options and Areca also supports scripting of post-job actions.

Bonkey - http://sites.google.com/site/thebackupmonkey/

The "Backup Monkey." Bonkey runs on both Windows and Mac, and has a lot of great features. It supports email, FTP, and Amazon S3, compression, encryption, scheduling, and synchronization. It'll even back up MS SQL server databases.

Cobian Backup - http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm

Apart from being a great application, Cobian's developer has an excellent support forum online to help you get started. Though it is no longer open source, you may still download the last version that was (v8).

JaBack - http://www.hiteksoftware.com/jaba/

Allows backup to FTP and email (as well as any drive on your computer or network), and sports a flexible scheduler. It also has a file monitor function that will perform backup operations whenever changes are detected.

While this list could continue, we will stop with the above 7 programs.  Once again, we encourage you to research the best option for your business.