“Easy and fast backup copies”

We're constantly reminding you how important backup copies are. Now let us repeat it once more, and also recommend you this app for your backups.

Areca is a plainly designed open source tool with which you can make backup copies of all your important documents on a regular basis. Despite its simple appearance, I personally found the program to be quite difficult to use, mainly due to the usage of strange concepts (such as a "workspace", which I still don't know what is for) and the fact that they actually refer to backup copies as "targets", which took me a while to find out.

Other than that, the program features the classic options and tools in this kind of software apps. On the downside, it lacks the possibility to schedule copies. However, it does make up for it by offering support for incremental backups, file compression, FTP server and other goodies.

This backup tool is simple in design, but a bit confusing to use. While it lacks backup automation tools, it also offers some extra options like file compression and support for incremental backups.

Languages:

English, Spanish, German, French, Dutch, Swedish

OS requirements for Areca Backup:

OS: Win2000/XP/Vista

Minimum requirements:

Java Runtime Environment Version 1.4.2 or higher

Pros

Support for copying to FTP servers
Incremental backups
File compression

Cons

Confusing, difficult to use
No backup scheduling option

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From the publisher of Areca Backup

Areca Backup is a personal file backup software developed in Java. Beside its graphical interface, Areca comes with a command-line interface which can be used for backup automation.

Check out the program's features:

Archives compression (Zip & Zip64 format)
Archives encryption (Triple DES & AES encryption algorithm)
Storage on local hard drive, network drive, USB key, FTP / FTPs server (with implicit and explicit SSL / TLS)
Source file filters (by extension, subdirectory, regular expression, size, date, status, with AND/OR operators)
Incremental, differential and full backup support
Archives merges / deletion : You can merge contiguous archives in one single archive or safely delete your latest archives.
As of date recovery : Areca allows you to recover your archives (or single files) as of a specific date.
Transaction mechanism : All critical processes (such as backups or merges) support a transaction mechanism (with commit / rollback management) which guarantees your backups' integrity.