Paragon backup and recovery free edition

Disk Imaging has rapidly become a must have tool for most users because of its convenience, speed, and altogether ease of use. With disk imaging software a user can safely recover their computer from a system crash or a bad virus infection without having to worry about reformatting and reinstalling the operating system. With drive imaging there is almost no reason at all to have to reinstall Windows because it offers you the ability to restore an image to your hard drive in a fraction of that time and accomplish the same thing while keeping all of your programs and important data. For many users this has made Windows backup and other file backup solutions redundant.

According to the experts’ reviews, the new Backup & Recovery 2010 Free Advanced Edition, based on solid commercial backup and recovery software from Paragon, can be considered as the best freeware drive imaging utility, offering a rich set of features.

Main Features

Backup Features

• Backup to FTP servers - provide a new level of system and data protection.
• Backup Capsule - You can place a backup image to a special secured place on the hard disk called the Backup Capsule that has an independent system layout (e.g. a separate partition) and will stay operable should the active file system be damaged. To avoid an accidental removing or unauthorized access of the backup data, this partition is hidden and thus cannot be mounted in the operating system.
• Support for the latest hardware as well as hard disk partitioning schemes.
• Support of all present day techniques to store backup images
• Disk backup to save not only all on-disk information but also the system service structures. It is ideal for making a backup image of an entire hard disk (including GPT-discs!) or system partitions to guarantee the operating system’s working capability
• Differential backup  to a sector image to only archive changes since the last full sector-based image, thus considerably saving the backup storage space. To restore this kind of backup you will require a full image and one of its differentials

Restore Facilities

• Restore an entire disk, separate partitions image
• Restore with Shrink to restore a backup amount of actual data of the image
• Create bootable USB Flash drive, CD or DVD to recover your PC on demand 

Advanced Backup Tasks

• Differential Partition Backup (Create a differential image of a partition)

Supplementary Tools

• Recovery Media Builder: builds a new "recovery media" to boot from in case of an unbootable system
• Check Recovery Discs: checks the recovery media for integrity and bootability 

Virtualization and Migration Facilities

• P2V Migration - Clones an existing software environment into a virtual disk. Migrate a physical system to a virtual environment by converting all installed software and data into a virtual disk of the required virtual machine.
• P2V Adjust OS - Recover the OS startup ability after an unsuccessful virtualization by a 3rd party tool.

User Friendly Fault Minimizing Interface

• Graphical representation of the data to gain a better understanding
• Comprehensive wizards to simplify even the most complex operations
• A context sensitive hint system for all functions of the program
• Previewing the resulting layout of hard disks before actually executing operations (so-called virtual operations) 

Partitioning tools 

• Create Partition
• Format Partition
• Delete Partition
• Assign/Remove Drive Letter
• Hide/Unhide Partition
• Mark Partition as Active/Inactive
• Modify: change volume label, Test Surface
• Check File System Integrity

Operations with Archives

• Add an archive to the database
• Delete the archive from the database
• Restore from the selected archive
• Restore File From Archive
• Differential backup
• Check Archive Integrity
• Mount/Unmount the archive

System Requirements

Supported Operating Systems

• Windows 7 (32/64-bit)
• Windows Vista (32/64-bit)
• Windows XP Professional SP2 (32/64-bit)
• Windows XP Home SP2
• Windows 2000 Professional SP4   

Supported Hard Drives and Removable Media

• Parallel ATA (IDE) HDD
• Serial ATA (SATA) HDD
• External SATA (eSATA) HDD
• SCSI HDD
• All levels of SCSI, IDE and SATA RAID controllers
• USB 1.x/2.0 and IEEE 1394 (FireWire) devices
• PC card storage devices
• GUID Partition Table (GPT)
• Support large hard disks (up to 2TB, both MBR- and GPT-formatted)

Supported File Systems

• NTFS (v1.2, v3.0, v3.1)
• FAT16
• FAT32
• Linux Ext2FS
• Linux Ext3FS
• Linux Ext4FS
• Linux Swap
• HPFS
• Limited read/write access to Apple HFS+ partitions.

Supported Virtual Machines

• Microsoft Virtual PC
• VMware Workstation
• VMware Fusion
• VMware Player
• Oracle VirtualBox

System Requirements

• CPU: Intel Pentium or compatible, 300MHz or higher processor
• RAM: 256 MB or greater recommended
• Disk space: 100 Mb
• Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher
• Mouse
• SVGA video adapter and monitor

Developers’ Website: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/

Direct Download: http://download.cnet.com/Paragon-Backup-amp-Recovery-Free-Advanced-Edition/3000-2242_4-10972187.html

Screenshot: