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Choosing Suitable Backup Software Does Matter.

Choosing suitable backup software is as important as choosing the right house or the right car - you will have to live with it daily. Choose a good backup software package and you will get regular and reliable backups, with the wrong one you will get unreliable backups or none at all.

Why Buy Commercial Backup Software?

The simplest answer is that you only get what you pay for. Freeware is available, most operating systems have some sort of backup software, and most backup hardware bundles some basic backup software package. This is frequently a stripped-down version of a commercial package tempting you to upgrade to the full version. They work, but are much less full-featured than the commercial package. You can always try free software to see if it meets your needs.

Backup Software Features to Look for.

Media Spanning: Seen by many as the definition of 'real' backup software, media spanning is the ability to backup large files onto multiple pieces of media.

Backup Verification: Any decent backup package must have a verification mode. To ensure that the backup is correct and viable, the software compares every file that it backs up to the original file on your hard disk.

Scheduling and Automatic Operation: A helpful feature found on most commercial software. The backup will run automatically at a preset time, so you don't have to be around to do it.

Wide Device Support: How many hardware devices does it work with? As a rule, software support for new devices is less common than for established ones. Check if they provide updates as new drives hit the market; some do not.

Operating System Support: Does the package support all the features and requirements of your operating system?

Backup Type Selection: Even basic software should provide full, selective and incremental backup options, good ones allow the use of search strings or patterns to select files and directories.

Disaster Recovery: An important feature mostly limited to more expensive products, with names like one-step recovery, single-step restore, or similar. With this, a disk is created with a special recovery program that lets you restore your system without reinstalling the entire operating system. This can save a lot of time and trouble.

Compression: Software compression is very useful, saving space on your backup media.

Media Append and Overwrite: You should have options to always append to the existing files on the backup media, always overwrite, or prompt the user.

Tape Tools: If you backup to a tape unit, will the backup software allow you to format, rewind, retension, or view the catalog on your tape? The tape drive manufacturer often supplies software that does this, but it is more convenient if the backup software supports it.

Security: Can you password-protect your backup set?

Backup Configuration Profiles: You will probably want to do different types of backups for different situations, better software packages allow you to avoid changing the settings every time by saving different profiles.

Andrew Whitehead is a contributor at Free-backup.info -- the home of the popular Amazon S3 based online backup service -- Back2zip. This article available at http://free-backup.info/what-to-look-for-when-choosing-backup-software.html