The best free software to back up your data

To configure a backup on Windows, you must first select the target drive. This could be a second internal drive, a USB stick, or any other device that can be inserted into a PC. For example, storage on a network or in a shared folder on NAS is not possible.

Then, for the structural area, everything is relatively simplified. The selection of the backup table is done in the first drop-down menu, and you are given a limit of every 10 minutes each day. The second menu deals with retention and indicates that you can keep your backups for one to 12 months or forever or until the target storage is full. This retention freedom is very important, especially if you want to keep versions of documents for a limited period of time.

Then comes the selection of folders to backup. Very easily, click Add a folder to select the destination. It can be a specific folder or an entire disk. For example, if you select your entire C: drive, you can add exclusion folders in the next step. A small drawback: Windows completely selects the most difficult files for you to backup and delete. A selection tool to quickly remove things that are not of interest to us is welcome.

You will notice that, unlike other software on this list, we do not have a choice of backup type (full, magnify, variation).