Back up files, email and settings

GFI Backup Home Edition is a powerful – and free – backup tool. Launch a web browser and go to GFI's website. Click the Download FREEWARE link and fill in the short personal details form, clicking to remove the ticks from the contact options (unless you would like to keep informed about product updates). Click the grey Download button and then click the green Download button. If the File Download Security Warning dialogue box appears, click Save and then choose a location for the downloaded file. Firefox users should select Save File to save the download to Firefox’s default download folder. Once the file has finished downloading (it’s not big, so shouldn’t take long), double-click it to install the program. The setup wizard is straightforward to follow: click Next, select the ‘I accept the terms of the license agreement’ radio button and click Next again. Leave the default folder selected, click Next twice and wait for the program to install itself. Once complete, leave ‘Launch the program after installation’ ticked and click Finish.

The program’s main window will open to display four options: click the Backup option to create the first backup job. The Backup Task Properties screen will appear, with the backup job’s options split into six tabs. Begin by giving the backup job a suitably descriptive name – the same name will be automatically applied to the Archive File/Folder Name field too, but this can be edited to something more suitable for a folder or zip file name if necessary. Add a description if required, then click Next to move on to the next step.

The Source tab will open, giving four options: Files/Folders, Registry Keys, Email and User Settings. Start by clicking the Files/Folders button to reveal a series of boxes referring to drives and file types. Click the plus (‘+’) sign next to a drive to expand its contents – keep clicking plus signs next to folders to open them, or click the minus (‘-’) sign to close them again. Click the box next to a folder or file to add a tick and select it for backup. Keep adding files and folders – it is fine to close folders after they have been selected – until everything you want to back up has been selected.

An alternative method is to ask GFI Backup to back up certain file types, wherever they may be on the hard disk. A number of options, such as Productivity files (covering most document types, including Office and Adobe PDF files) and Picture Files, are provided – just tick one to select it. Advanced users can click the File Masks button to create their own: click the >> button (next to the Inclusion Mask box) to select a type, or manually enter file types, such as ‘*.pdf’ for PDF files and ‘*.txt’ for text files. Click OK when done.

Click Email to back up messages, accounts and other settings – most popular email programs are supported. Just tick the program name or click the plus (‘+’) sign next to it to select exactly what to back up before clicking OK. Click User Settings to back up selected program and Windows settings – again, tick options to select them. Finally, advanced users can back up parts of the Windows Registry by clicking the Registry Keys button: select and tick the required keys in the usual way – most program settings are found in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software sections. Less-experienced users can skip this.

Click Next to choose where to store the backup – most backup devices are supported, including hard disks (internal and external), recordable CD/DVD/ Blu-ray media and USB memory keys. Further choices can be made: click Browse to select a specific drive or folder, for example, or opt to erase a rewritable disc before saving to it. If saving to a network folder, tick the ‘Folder is password protected’ box and enter the username and password Windows requires to access that folder. Once complete, click Next again.

The Options tab is split into three parts: choose the Use Zip compression radio button under Compression Settings to keep the backup as small as possible – the default compression settings should be fine for most people. Encryption settings can be ignored unless the data is sensitive and stored on a shared drive – select AES encryption if this is the case and choose a strong password. The Backup Type is important: to store earlier versions of files select Stacked Backup, but note this will greatly increase the backup’s size over time. Click Next.

Schedule the backup for as often as it needs to run – in most cases, once a day should be sufficient, so select ‘Run every few days’, leave 1 selected as the frequency and choose a time when the computer is likely to be on and idle, say at lunchtime. The User Authentication Settings section – which means those used to log onto Windows itself – can be left blank unless the ‘Wake up computer from Standby/Hibernate before running Task’ box is ticked. Click Next, tick Verify Backup and click Finish.

Click Yes when prompted to run the backup task. It will work in the background, and a confirmation message will appear when the backup is finished and has been successfully verified. Click Close to exit. The backup job can be reviewed or edited at any time: click My Tasks to view a summary. If a task is currently running, its progress is listed next to the task’s name. Double-click the task to review its settings and make changes using the same Backup Tasks Properties screen as before.

Backups can be restored from the main screen: click Restore, then choose whether to restore the entire backup or individual files and folders (including email and settings). If recovering selected files, folders or settings, choose what to restore by holding the Control (Ctrl) key and clicking on the relevant files, folders or settings. To restore the files to their original locations, click Restore – if prompted to overwrite existing files, click Yes or Yes to all. To restore to a different folder, click the Restore To… button instead, select the chosen location and click OK.