You know that you should back your data up. But you still don't because you don't know what to get. Here is the overview of four budget backup solutions that I've personally used and can vouch for.

Acronis True Image 8.0 (Acronis)

Acronis True Image allows you to create an exact disk image for complete system backup and disk cloning providing the most comprehensive data protection. The disk backup file contains the exact copy of a hard disk, including all the computer data, operating system, and programs. After a system crash you can restore the entire system or simply replace lost files and folders from your disk backup, so you don't need to reinstall Windows. Acronis True Image 8.0 is quite speedy, creating an image of a 46 gig partition in approximately 8 minutes with little compression. Restoring a complete image can be a lot longer than creating one, but with the built in Rescue Media Builder, its as easy as booting from that CD, telling it where the image is, and what partition to restore it to. You can wander off for dinner or TV and reboot your computer to the image you have saved, ready to go in roughly 30 minutes for an 80 gig drive. The time to save and restore images is hard to estimate here because larger partitions and more compression takes longer then a smaller partition and no compression.

Genie Backup Manager Professional (Genie Soft)

Genie Backup Manager Professional is a very easy to use yet powerful and flexible software that can backup and restore files, documents, emails, settings, programs and more to virtually any local or remote device including internal and external hard disks, FTP locations, across network, CD/DVD discs, removable media, memory sticks, and tapes. GBM Pro is perfect for users of all computer comfort levels. Novice users will find it easy to create their first backup job in matter of minutes after installing the software, thanks to its intuitive wizard-based user interface, while advanced users will appreciate the software's extended flexibility and features such as preserving NTFS Alternative Data Streams, Email notification, Self executable backup sets, and scripting capabilities (GRunScript and GenieScript).

HandyBackup (Novosoft)

HandyBackup is so easy, you might actually find yourself backing data up. HandyBackup is designed for an automatic backup of your critical data virtually to any type of storage media including CD-RW devices and remote FTP servers. You can use HandyBackup to make a reserve copy of any valuable data on your system. Special addons are provided to facilitate the backup of MS Outlook, system registry and ICQ files. Restoring is as easy as clicking a button, but you can also use a number of advanced options. The program can be also used to synchronize files between two computers on a network.

HandyBackup is designed for MS Windows 9x/NT/2000/ME/XP. Strong file encryption and multi-choice zip compression on the fly, as well as many other useful features, will protect your valuable data. All backup activities are recorded in a log file. Detailed online help is available, which is always nice.

Backup4All (Softland)

The software performs all four fundamental backup types: full backup, differential backup, incremental backup and mirror backup. Using the wizard you can easily set up any backup configuration you wish. You can define powerful file filters and schedule your backups any way you want. Once a backup is performed, you can see what files have been changed since the last backup using the explorer-like tree view or you can read the statistics about the next backup execution. You can use the context menu from the tree to run standard actions associated with the file type. I now use Backup4all to do my day-to-day backup, and I recommend it for those who want a more automated solution. It uses its own file catalog to keep track of what's been backed up and when. That's the only completely reliable way to do it -- you can sometimes miss files with other methods.

Another safety feature - all files and subfolders are included unless you expressly exclude them (by unchecking). This means that if new files or subfolders are added to a folder, the next backup will pick them up as well. Not all backup programs work this way. Once in a while you may not want to back up a file that has been added to a folder, and if you forget to exclude it, it will be backed up anyway. Better to have backed up and not meant to, than not to have backed up at all.

Download Links

Acronis http://www.deprice.com/acronistrueimage.htm
GBM Pro http://www.deprice.com/geniebackupmanagerprofessional.htm
HandyBackup http://www.deprice.com/handybackup.htm
Backup4All http://www.deprice.com/backup4all.htm