Cobian Backup for Windows

User Reviews

• darn good, but restoring from incrementals

  Abter1July 20, 2017

  Pros

  As most reviews have said, this is a mighty powerful backup tool. That it is both free AND ad free is incredible

  Cons

  My only complaint is it doesn't make restoring from a full with multiple incremental backups easy One of my critical uses of Cobian is to backup my flash drives, which are easy to loose or smash. I make routine incremental backups. Cobian's incremental fn is great and intuitive. But Cobian doesn't give you any help to easily restore everything. My goal: use my full backup and the set of incremental backups to create a new flash drive that is a complete copy of the flash drive as it was when I last did an incremental (same directory structure, original time stamps, etc). The concept: first retrieve the full backup, and then go through the incremental backups from oldest to newest. Every time you come across a newer version of a file, replace the older version of each file previously copied onto the new flash drive. The Cobian help file is silent on this; manual is the only way (I think). A wizard to do a straightforward restore is very much needed.

  Summary

  Great software, great price (free), but needs to help restore from a full plus set of incrementals.

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• refined software, functionallygreat attention to detail

  Dean SiJune 6, 2016

  Pros

  Almost every option Ive wanted from other backup software this thing has already.! Easy enough to setup. It works .!! (yeah some backup software doesnt work) obviously a programmer with attention to detail made this. The functions help make it more reliable, like the taskbar icon is a different color and flashes if the backup had any errors, options to set cpu priority, options to run as another user so you dont need to see any notifications if you want. Small memory usage, 9.6mb on my system.

  Cons

  none so far.

  Summary

  I cant say enough, its the best free backup software Ive seen. After using 5 and testing about 10

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• Great backup program

  Uncle SamApril 19, 2016

  Pros

  Easy to setup, free, very solid and works every time. I had another free program that also has a paid version, but it kept missing backups for some unknown reason, so I looked for another free programs and found this one, I had it for some time now and it never missed a beat, I had it backup on Sundays only and let the other program do my daily backup, but after a while, I discovered to my horror that the other program was not backing up properly, that was when I needed one backed up file and was no were to be found, luckily it was on this backup, so I have now dumped the other program and is using this one full time. It also does shadow copy which is very important in my case.

  Cons

  None so far, its been rock solid.

  Summary

  This is a highly recommended backup program that has many features other paid backups don't have, its free and does the job well.

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• Unable to download

  shuckieJanuary 15, 2016

  Pros

  None - appears to be a virus.

  Cons

  BitDefender attempts to block access to the page as a reported attack page, and when attempting to download the setup file for submission to VirusTotal Firefox also attempted to block it as containing a virus. I overrode both blocks to download the file and upload to VirusTotal but have not attempted to run it. I will delete the file after writing this review.

  Summary

  I cannot recommend this based upon my experience outlined in the "Cons". Download CNET staff - please check this file and download location ASAP. Thank you.

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• Doesn't get better than this

  Fitz7600November 1, 2015

  Pros

  Easy to install, configure and use. Absolutely reliable. Can't believe it's free.

  Cons

  There are no cons.

  Summary

  Worth every penny and more...wait...it's free. This is a program that I've used for years.

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• Did everything I needed, quickly and easily, and more.

  chitown35October 18, 2014

  Pros

  Many options to configure backups with. Quick and Easy.

  Cons

  There aren't any.

  Summary

  I wanted to set up automatic backups of my data. It took me about 10 minutes to install and do so. Not only that, but there were added features of keeping more than one copy. And it even automatically named the root directory of my backups with a timestamp.

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• Works with Windows Home Server 2011! WHS

  salazarjohnJanuary 5, 2014

  Pros

  backs up large 3tb drives which WHS 2011 does not very easy to use just add tasks for each backup you want allows you to selected the type of backup you want ie: full, differential etc..

  Cons

  none its free what more do you want?

  Summary

  great solution for WHS

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• Very Good. One of the best I've found.

  xcopyOctober 24, 2013

  Pros

  The latest version, 11.2.x, provides full, incremental, and differential backups, and can even use the volume shadow copy so you can backup while your actively working in Outlook, Word, etc. In windows 7, it's as easy as selecting the folders you want to back up, pointing the program to the right disk/folder where you want the files stored, and starting the process. You can backup to an different internal drive on a PC, an external, or as I'm told, a NAS drive, though I haven't tried the later myself. The program is fast, copying at least 100GB per hour when doing a full backup to an external USB 3.0 drive.

  Cons

  The documentation isn't always clear, and you may have to consult the online forum if you have questions, but I've been able to resolve all questions successfully - so far. A caveat I'd offer is that you need to make sure that you - as owner of the original files and destination files/folders - have the security set properly. You must have read/write authority if you want to do incremental backups without the software trying to copy everything again. The documentation is not always clear, and the UI could be modernized, but it's a great program and has never failed me.

  Summary

  For those that want a magic program that knows what to do without being told, I'm not sure where you're going to find that, but Cobian backup is a very solid program that does just what I want a program to do; namely, it creates an exact duplicate of the original file(s) without using a proprietary format, or enforced compression. Of course you can use compression, but I don't. The last thing you want to find is that you can't restore from a proprietary backup file, so I like to leave files in the native format even if it takes more space - meaning the exact same amount of space the original file required on your hard drive. As to one (or two?) reviewer's comment about it taking up extra space, I'm not sure what he/she (or they did) but I don't believe they understand what's happening, how to use the program, or manage backups. A real backup will ADD files; if you move file A from location 1 to location 2, it won't delete the file in location 1, but it will add it in location 2. Moving or adding files will increase the size of the backup folder over time. If you simply modify file A and leave it in the same location, you can have the software over write the file if you choose. There are lots of possibilities, and you should understand what you're doing if you want the security of a real backup. To get you started, here's a very basic incremental backup strategy that COPIES files. I'm not saying this is the best way, and it does take some work, but if your files are valuable, I would suggest you work out a some kind of strategy that suits you. 1) create a backup folder (e.g., on an external drive)with a name of your choosing. Call it MyBackup, or something you'll easily recognize. However, before doing a backup, check the properties/security of the new folder and make sure you have ownership/read/write capabilities. 2)Create a baseline - Select all the folders on your PC that you want to backup, point Cobian to your new backup folder on the external drive, and do either an incremental* or full backup. I've started with a full backup, but I think incremental might be a better way to go and eliminate possible redundant copying. 3) perform incremental backups (daily/weekly) the frequency is your choice, but you must do this regularly, and the more frequently you do it, the better your recovery options are and the faster the backup will go. With regular incremental backups, Cobian can/does sift through hundreds of GBs of data quickly, and will copy just the new/modified files extremely quickly. It is fast.. NOTE: the size of the baseline backup folder will grow as you add new things. You would have to physically delete files from this folder if you no longer want them, but then it wouldn't be a real "backup", would it? 4) Optional. Assuming you've done incremental backups - as opposed to differential, if/when your baseline has grown too large, you can manage it. You can start over with a new baseline and delete the old one(assuming there's nothing there you might want), or to be a little safer, you could create a new baseline, and then use a compare/duplicate file finder to remove dupes and identify the files that are different. This adds more work, but you can safely assume you won't lose anything. The software is not really confusing, hard to use, and works flawlessly on a Windows 7 PC. A little understanding can go a long way toward creating a backup strategy and protecting your data.

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• Runs out of space

  SINBADOctober 12, 2013

  Pros

  easier to use than most others

  Cons

  You need many external hard drives as this software runs out of space on external. I now have 3 external to back up my 500gb laptop. I have approximately 300 gb of my photos and a 1TB (latest one) of space. Been using Cobian since Jan 2013 and ran out of space on it July 2013.

  Summary

  Costly way to backup. How many external hard drives can you afford to keep buying? I did a full backup in Jan 2013 and since then just differential backups but ran out of space after using for 7 months. I started using this as I needed a place to move my photos from my laptop as it was completely filled. Did the full backup before I deleted my photos and just differential since then. This is 2nd harddrive I have used to backup my laptop and hopefully nothing happens as I have no idea on what I am doing or how to restore if I ever have to. There is no support that I have found for Cobian so you are at their mercy and just hope it will do the job. No instructions or tutorials that help either. Wish I could find another backup that would be easy to use for when i get another external. If they only had support that would tell you exactly how to use this and explain in easy to read English for newbies. One of their links for support is in a foreign language, so what good is that?

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• Difficult to use

  914ian914August 22, 2013

  Pros

  Has many features.

  Cons

  It wasn't immediately obvious how to use the program. There are many options and parts of the interface that were difficult to understand because they weren't clearly explained in the tutorial or the documentation. When I ran my backup, it ran out of space because for some reason the size of the backup is 1.4 times larger than the size of my hard drive, even though I unchecked the options for symbolic links. I Googled this and found no solution. It comes with a "Deleter" for which I could not determine a purpose other than it deletes files.

  Summary

  I wouldn't recommend this program to anyone who doesn't already understand the jargon associated with backup software. I would also mention that it may have a serious bug that causes backups to take up more space than they should.

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