Backups! You never know you need them until it's too late, but it doesn't have to be that way. With a bit of discipline and the right app, you can back up data to an external hard drive, a secondary SSD, or even a USB stick without any major hiccups. The program Backup Assist reduces the whole process to a couple of clicks, using custom sources and a "mirror mode" to create folder replicas.
One day, your hard drive will fail. The same will happen to your NVMe, USB drive, memory card, and the internal storage of your mobile devices. Of course, nothing stops you from buying new components... but the end goal is that those failures don't catch you off guard and you pay the price with your data.
Now, the web is full of tools that aim to automate data backup, but I've always believed that a classic personal backup should be a manual task, and with that in mind I came across Backup Assist, developed by the same creator of Essential Office (which fixed many of its limitations in the last update). Backup Assist has been specially designed for backing up data to external hard drives, but you can choose almost anything available as a destination drive.
How to back up data to external drives with Backup Assist
The program uses different categories as "sources" for backups. For example, when it says "Documents," it refers to the documents folder of the active user. The same applies to Pictures, Music, Videos, Downloads, and Desktop. Backup Assist can also back up Outlook accounts, eM Client, and the old Windows Live Mail, system aspects such as the registry and the BCD store, and browser favorites from Edge, Chrome, and the retired IE.
However, advanced mode enables the configuration of custom sources, and most importantly, the type of backup to perform. The options are "Incremental," "Mirror," and "Full." Incremental is the default mode, and it focuses only on adding new and/or updated files to the destination drive, without deleting what already exists. On the other hand, Mirror is the mirror mode, and it creates an exact copy between source and destination, updating or deleting any file as necessary. Full mode is for creating complete backups every time, separated into subfolders that use the date as a name.
Once you've defined the sources and the type of backup, you select the destination drive and click Start Backup. All data will be saved in a folder called Backup, following the network name and user structure. Obviously, the time will depend on the amount of data to back up and the speed of the drives, but Backup Assist's performance has been very good even when working with USB sticks.
To finish, two details: In the future, I'd like to see an option to customize the destination path (in addition to choosing simple drives), and the ability to return to the main menu once the backup finishes (for now, the only way to do another backup is to close the program and reopen it). Apart from that, Backup Assist works very well. Link below!
Official website and download: Click here
