Backing up is almost as boring as it is necessary. So you prefer to worry about that as little as possible. That in turn requires a reliable program that follows the principle of setting everything correctly in one go and letting the software run its course as much as possible. Only after Murphy has visited do you still have to get to work with Paragon Backup & Recovery CE.
There are many commercial backup tools out there, but frankly, if you can use a program like Paragon Backup & Recovery (Community Edition) for free at home, we see little reason to cut the slack. By the way, there is a commercial version of this app, but for automated ones backups and for recovery operations you don’t really need functions as much as: support of the Windows server, (re)partitioning of drives, cloning operations or mail notifications.
So we are happy to get started with Paragon Backup & Recovery 17 CE.
Installation
You download the tool at www.tiny.cc/parabr. Note that both for Windows if macOS is available. We base ourselves here on the Windows edition. You can download it in two variants: 32- and 64-bit. Chances are you’ll need the latter. When in doubt, go through Windows Settings / System / About find out what type of system your Windows installation is from.
You start the installation with a double click on the downloaded exe file. The installation only takes a few mouse clicks, after which you start the app. A message appears stating that you have not yet created recovery media. We’ll have to wait a little longer for that (see ‘Recovery medium’).
Startup
On the far left you have a button bar, but in the free version you only have to worry about the first button (Backup & Recovery), because the other two are in fact reserved for the commercial edition. Well there are one more Helpbutton (which takes you to a PDF for the paid version) and a Settings-knob. The latter contains one interesting part (Recovery Media Builder), but we’ll get to that later.
So open the section Backup & Recovery. You notice that there is already a first backup session ready for you. You still have to set all parameters yourself, such as source and destination location and backup type. Also click on the pencil icon here to change the name of the backup task.
source location
Let’s start with the source location. as soon as you click backup source click, a dialog box with three choices appears: Entire Computer, Disc/Volumes and Files/Folders. They seem to speak for themselves. It is quite logical that only with the last two an extra window pops up asking you to indicate exactly what you want to backup.
Bee Disc/Volumes a graphical overview appears with the different volumes per detected disk. You can select one or more individual volumes as well as an entire disk. An orange frame marks your selection(s), after which you press OK confirms. Did you have Files/Folders selected, you will be presented with a simple file browser. Here you can mark all desired folders and/or files yourself or choose at the top Select files by file type and you select from typical file extensions of three main types: Documents, music and Video. click on Add your file types if you want to add file types yourself. Also indicate in which folders the app should search for the selected types.
Target location
Of course, a backup also requires a target location. So just click Destination and choose from three storage media: Local folders, external drives and Network locations. The latter are usually accessible via a so-called UNC path, such as \nasbackup folder. You can adjust the corresponding login details via the pencil icon: Username and password. You can also create new network locations via the plus icon and immediately give them a suitable display name.
Have you previously linked a drive letter to such a network location, for example by executing a command at the Command Prompt like:
net use x: \
Then you will find this network location at Local folders. Once the connection has been established, a list of subfolders appears and you indicate the desired destination folder – or you create such a folder yourself via the folder icon. Confirm your choices here too with OK.
Backup strategy
Your source and target locations are now set, but you’re not quite there yet. Two tabs will appear that you should read through first. One of them is Backup strategy. Here you determine both the time schedule and the actual strategy (read: the backup type and the retention policy). Click here Backup is not scheduled to schedule a backup. You will see this task appear neatly in the Windows Task Scheduler.
You can choose between Daily, weekly and monthly, where you also indicate the times and frequency. Bee weekly for example, you choose the days of the week, the day and the time when you want to start the backup and you indicate how many weeks you want to backup. Handy is also on event, with choice between System start and User logon. click on Show advanced settings to run the backup from a specific account, specify whether you want to wake the PC for this, or if you want to rerun a missed backup. Confirm with OK.
Then click Full backups only and make it clear which backup you want: full, incremental or differential. You can find clear explanations about these backup types, for example, via www.bit.ly/backuptyping. You also indicate how long you want to keep older backups, and which ones, for example By number or backup / 3. Confirm again with OK.
extra options
Back in the main window, you can close the app or click Back up now click if you want to start the backup right away. Or open the tab first Options. Here you can, among other things, set the compression rate for your backup, but also determine the maximum size of a backup file. This can be useful if you want to transfer it (afterwards) to a CD or USB stick, for example.
Click at Password protection on Set password to encrypt your backup (for example with AES-256 encryption) and lock it with a password. By default, the backup is packaged in a Paragon Image (.pvhd) so you can access it from Paragon (see “Recovery”), but a disk image for VMware, Microsoft Virtual PC (or VirtualBox), and Hyper-V is also possible if you prefer to mount it through one of these virtualization apps. You can also indicate by ticking that the PC should not go to sleep during the backup, that the integrity of the backup file should be checked after creation, and that the system may be shut down after the backup.
Bee raw processing you can even have partitions backed up sector-by-sector (useful for unsupported file systems) and finally you can have external programs or scripts run before or after the backup.
You’re all set now, unless you want to run additional backups. That is no more difficult than pressing the plus button at the top left and going through the different steps again.
recovery
A backup should of course be usable when Murphy has been by. That is why it is good that you always have the integrity of your backups checked, but in the event of a disaster it is of course a matter of being able to actually recover data. This can be done in different ways in this app, but it does take some searching.
We assume that you can start the PC and the app without any problems and that you want to restore a complete backup. Then select the desired backup. The thick dotted lines to the left of the clockwork icon, at Backup timeline, suggest successive backup versions. Click here on the desired backup version and choose restore. Accept or not the original source location as the backup restore location and confirm with Restore now.
It is also possible to selectively restore folders and files. In this case you choose Explore in the drop-down menu and indicate all necessary data files. click on Export, mark the destination and click Next. It can also be different: choose Mount/Unmount and indicate at Mount Point an appropriate drive letter. as soon as you click Next click, Windows links the source location to a virtual drive and you can restore data along that way. Choose again none to unlink this drive.
Recovery Medium
Unfortunately, it can also happen that your system refuses to start, so that you cannot start the Paragon app either. If you had made a recovery medium in time, you can still boot that way.
You create such a recovery medium via Settings / Recovery Media Builder. You use the disk image file of your own Windows installation for this (but then you cannot create an iso image file, if you wish). Or you can first download the necessary ADK files for your Windows version (Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit). This can be done via the download link, after which you enter the path to your installed ADK. Confirm with Next and follow the further instructions.
Depending on the option chosen, you can now create an ISO file or immediately create a bootable USB stick. With this you can still start the hard-learning system and run the Paragon app. From here, almost all recovery options are open to you and you will undoubtedly get your corrupt system partition working again from this Windows PE environment.
