Free Hard Disk Backup and Restore Utilities

Areca Backup

Areca Backup is an open source backup program that lets you back up a set of files and directories (folders). It can also perform post-backup actions, like send you an email backup report, run custom scripts (batch files), etc. Your backups can be a zip file, a standard directory containing your a copy of your original files or delta backups (where only modified portions of your files are stored), etc. The software also supports encryption (AES128 and AES256), compression (zip and zip64), incremental, differential and full backups, the ability to recover archives from a specific date, the use of source file filters (to back up according to extension, subdirectory, size, date, status, etc), file version tracking, a command line interface as well as a graphical user interface, etc. Windows and Linux versions are available.

Bacula - The Open Source Network Backup Solution

Bacula is able to backup, verify your backups and restore (recover from backups) across a network of computers. The site says that the program is an "enterprise-ready, network-based backup program" meaning that it is designed so that an administrator can easily manage the backups of multiple computers on a corporate network. (Note though that it can also be used on a single computer system.) Besides being able to back up to a hard disk, it can also backup to a tape drive (a list of supported tape drives is given on their site). This tool works on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unix-type systems (including FreeBSD), although precompiled versions (that is, ready-to-run packages) appear to be available only for Windows and Linux. (If you have the know-how, you can of course download the source code and compile them into executables for your system yourself.)

BackupPC Open Source Backup

BackupPC allows you to back up your Windows, Linux and Mac OS X PCs, desktops and laptops to a server's disk. It either uses SMB, tar over SSH/RSH/NFS or rsync. The program is written in Perl and is open source.

Amanda Backup and Recovery Software Community Edition

The Amanda Community Edition is an open source backup and recovery software for Linux. Administrators can set up a backup server to back up mulitiple host computers to a single tape drive, tape changer or hard disk via the network.

Microsoft SyncToy

Microsoft SyncToy allows you to synchronize your data between two storage locations, so that you can keep the latest version of your files in both locations. The tool is also able to track situations when you rename a file, and it makes sure that the file in the other storage area is also renamed. The tool only works under Windows XP SP 2 and requires the .NET framework.

Back4Win

Back4Win allows home users the ability to backup and restore your data to ZIP and self-extracting EXE files. You can control the level of compression of your data files, span disks, predefine the disk size (to suit CD-Rs and CD-RWs), password-lock your backups, burn to CD-R/W, restore from damaged backups, etc.

Cobian Backup

Cobian Backup is a backup and restore utility that can backup your files and directories to another directory or drive on the same computer or to another computer on your network. It also supports FTP backup. You can compress and encrypt your backups. Standalone decompression and decryption utilities are also available so that if you wish, you can recover your files without having to use the backup program. Included with the backup program is a scheduler, so that you can schedule your backups to occur, say, every night when you are not using the computer. The program also supports remote backups. This is a Windows program.

FreeByte Backup

Freebyte Backup is a Windows program that supports the backing up files and directories to a backup directory. It also handles incremental backups, where only files not already in the backup set is saved, scheduled backups and profiles.

Unison File Synchronizer

Unison synchronizes files and directories stored on different hosts on the Internet. It can handle changes made to either replica of a distributed directory structure, and hence is more than just a mirroring utility. It is open source, distributed under the GNU GPL, and works on Windows, Linux, Solaris, OS X, etc.