SEVEN STEPS TO BACKUP BLISS

01 Do I need to pay for backup software?

You certainly don’t, but there are reasons you might choose to. If your backup requirements are simple – say, you have just a single folder of critical files that needs backing up once a week – then any number of free programs will do the job. Indeed, as we discuss on p92, there’s not one but two backup systems built right into Windows 10.

Even for more complicated scenarios, there might well be a free backup solution that meets your needs. In this Labs, we test eight free programs that offer capabilities that go far beyond simply duplicating files, including full-system imaging and advanced incremental and differential backup options.

As you’d expect, though, it’s the paid-for packages that tend to be more fully-featured, and where a backup program exists in both free and commercial editions, we’ll note the differences in our review. If you want cloud storage, that normally costs money too – which