COMODO BackUp 4.2.2.15

Everyone needs some form of backup in place, and while the backup tool that ships with Windows does an adequate job it’s not the most informative about what gets backed up. It can also be troublesome to implement, with strange error messages or a refusal to spot your backup drive because it’s decided it’s a system drive.

If you want more control over your backup – such as what gets backed up and where it’s backed up to, you need to look at third-party software. The good news is this doesn’t have to cost a penny, and Comodo Backup offers you as little or as much interaction as you want. Click Backup to get started and you’ll be presented with simple mode – a selection of easy-to-understand choices about what to back up. Select each one to see what will be backed up, and where it’ll be backed up too. Disappointingly, Comodo defaults to your personal user folder, which is of little use if your data is stored on the same drive as Windows itself: this is easily rectified by a trip to the Settings dialogue box, but you should get to choose this location when the program first runs, enabling you to select your external backup drive before you begin.

You can choose to back up each profile – documents, media, user folder, mail, browser settings and so on – once or click the clock icon to set a schedule. If you want full control over your backup, however, click the down arrow next to New Backup and you can choose exactly what to back up (including selected Registry entries) and where to back it up to – including CD or DVD (new to version 3). Comodo also supports macros, filters, split backup files and more besides.

Changes in version 4 are relatively minor, but you get a free 5GB account (after registration) by default and Comodo Online Backup is integrated in to Backup as default, enabling you to upgrade to a paid 250GB account, when necessary. 250GB of online storage is either $9.99/month or $99/year.

Comodo BackUp 4.2.2 ships with these fixes/changes:

- Windows 8 compatibility;
- Inclusion and exclusion filters now work for paths;
- Previously created backups that are listed in recent activities can now be loaded with all settings;
- System tray notifications for scheduled backups that run in silent mode and service mode;
- Comodo Dragon browser backup support;
- Improved CCloud drive browsing speed using cache;
- Improved CCloud upload speed using cache;
- Status bar (near tray) to indicate that online storage cache is upload/download or in error state;
- CB has tree view selection in Backup Step 1 (Advanced mode);
- Load backup settings from script;

Promising backup tool that is perhaps a little more complicated to use and set up than it needs to be. However, if you want full control over what gets backed up it’s worth a closer look.