Yadis Backup

Editors' ReviewDownload.com staffJuly 21, 2015When it comes to protecting your PC, there's no substitute for full backups capable of resurrecting your system from total disaster. But we're also big fans of regular targeted backups of personal files, favorites, and other data you don't want to lose, especially if your big backups are fairly infrequent. To be sure none of your important stuff falls between the cracks, we recommend a specialized backup application like Yadis Backup from Codessentials. This free tool creates full, one-to-one backups of your important personal data, settings, and documents that you can access normally, without having to restore them or unpack them through Yadis.Yadis has a simple but efficient interface with two modes, novice and expert. A setup wizard let us choose whether to start Yadis with Windows and similar options. This program's wizards made creating backup tasks a simple matter of clicking clearly labeled icons and check boxes, even in Expert mode, which offers all the settings of the standard mode but with more options. Using the program's wizard, we created standard backups, quickly backed up our Favorites folder, and modified existing tasks. We browsed to the files or folders we wanted to back up, and then selected a destination for our backup, which can be an USB drive or other removable drive. The program doesn't recommend using an internal hard disk, even a separate one. We could also specify FTP destinations, a nice option to have. Yadis saved exact copies of our specified files, creating duplicate subfolders and directories that we could open and access normally. The program keeps log files, too. When Yadis is running, we could click its system tray icon to access the Monitor and Actions menu.If you've ever restored a whole system from a backup file, you'll know that the things you miss the most are usually the most recently saved or created data, which is what your full backup missed. Regularly scheduled automatic backups of your critical data and significant stuff will save you a lot of grief at some point. Yadis Backup can take care of that for you.