Areca Backup for Windows

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Key Details of Areca Backup

Compress, encrypt, and backup files on your Windows PC.
Last updated on August 24, 2013
Virus scan status:
Clean (it’s extremely likely that this software program is clean)

Editors’ Review

Download.com staffAugust 24, 2013

Areca Backup is a free, open-source, Java-based backup utility. It's designed to be extremely easy to use for backing up files, directories, and settings. It supports incremental, differential, and full backups. But it's not designed to be a primary system backup tool like Windows Backup or Acronis. It's a fast, lightweight, and easy-to-use tool for backing up, recovering, and searching your archives. It requires an up-to-date version of the Java Runtime Environment, a free download.

Areca Backup's user interface has a familiar layout and look. A left-hand sidebar let us select an archive to display, and the main window is tabbed for displaying Archives, Logical View, History, Indicators, Search, Log, and Progression. Areca Backup also offers a Command Line interface that can be integrated into scheduling software, but we focused on the GUI tool. Areca's centered on Workspaces, which can be saved and imported. We started by clicking New Group on the Edit menu. We named and saved our new Group, and it appeared in the sidebar under our default Workspace. Next we selected a Target using a tool that let us specify a Repository from several options: Sources, with drag-and-drop capability; Compression, with Zip options, including encoding; and several interesting extras like the ability to specify pre- and post-processing parameters; Filters; and Transaction points. Better still, Areca offers Wizards for generating backup shortcuts and backup strategy commands.

We set up a backup of an MP3 archive with Standard data storage mode (other choices are Delta and Image) to a Local Repository, no compression or encryption, and following the same subdirectories. When we'd finished, we could simulate the backup before we ran it, a useful option (you can verify backups, too). Areca offers several ways to run backups; we clicked Start from the Run menu, and the program displayed the job's progress, recording it in the log file, history, and archives, with the data displayed in the Logical View. We just scratched the surface of Areca Backup's capabilities. We still insist there's no substitute for full backups that create disk and system images that can restore your computer when disaster strikes, but for everyday protection, Areca shines.

What’s new in version 7.3.6

Version 7.3.6 has added certificate authentication for SFTP connectivity.

Areca Backup for Windows

Used Areca Backup for Windows? Share your experience and help other users.

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Full Specifications

GENERAL

Release: August 24, 2013

Latest update: August 24, 2013

Version: 7.3.6

OPERATING SYSTEMS

Platform: Windows

Operating System

Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 10
Windows 2000
Windows 7

Additional Requirements: Java

POPULARITY

Total Downloads: 3,043

Downloads Last Week: 0

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Last Updated

User Reviews

3.8/5

5 User Votes

My Favorite backup software
July 26, 2013
Pros
Stable and reliable - the most important for a backup software. Has abundant features - backup, restore, check archive. Incremental backup. Supports multi-volume archive mode, so that you can have fixed size of archive files rather than to create thousands of small files. Can restore a part of files. Encryption supported.
Cons
Hope there is a button to safely Cancel a backup or restoration, and a button to Pause such operation.
Summary
Nice backup software, powerful, easy to use and cross platform.
Works great if you never need to recover
some_guy_on_the_internetMarch 18, 2012
Pros
Relatively easy to set up, seems to have a lot of features
Cons
Documentation is poor, very difficult to recover from a full crash
Summary
Installed at work to backup to a USB drive. Everything worked, not too bad to configure, set up on a schedule, and appreciate all those features. Unfortunately, when I brought home to test recovering from say, a hard drive failure, I was unable to do so. VERY difficult to use. Don't bother unless you feel like futzing around with things like a command line interface and trying to decipher terse documentation written in non-standard English when you are trying to recover all your important documents.
Did not do anything with it
marlem388April 20, 2011
Pros
Sounded good
Cons
Does not have an internet storage destination
Summary
<br /><br /><span class='notifyMsg'> Updated </span>on Apr 26, 2011<p/>as mentioned already
free, user friendly, viewable files, incremental backup
oldyoungguy888March 30, 2011
Pros
FREE for ALL (commercial and personal), can do incremental backup, original files are viewable in backup repository, can work with mapped drive, easy to use, tutorial is clear, Linux and Windows, encryption is available
Cons
not found yet
Summary
Does a certain part of the backup process well
giessenMarch 3, 2010
Pros
This can make a backup and keep it up-to-date by just changing the parts that need to be updated. It can cut large files into pieces and encrypt the backup (including the filenames) so it is completely safe. The backup process is reasonably fast.
Cons
It's not very effective for making a backup to a (mapped) network drive, because the backup process involves many write and read operations (more than just creating the backup files and saving them). No WebDAV compatibility.
Summary
I use this to make a local backup, which I then transfer to a web drive with a WebDAV synchronizer (in this case, Gladinet). Areca offers to save the backup to an FTP server, but they are not easily available anymore and have been superseded by WebDAV, whcih Areca can't handle. The backup process is fast and seems to be accurate. With a strong password (or a pass-key -- but you need to make a backup of that somewhere else) the files are probably very safe.

Developer’s Description

By Olivier PETRUCCI

Compress, encrypt, and backup files on your Windows PC.

Areca Backup is a file backup tool written in java. It supports data compression and encryption, incremental backup, file history explorer and many other features. Areca Backup also includes a transaction mechanism which guarantees your backups' integrity. As an additional security measure areca also features a backup simulation module. Two user interfaces are available: a command-line interface (useful for backup process automation) and a graphical user interface (useful for general administration tasks).

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