Uranium Backup 8.6.7.4865

Overview

Uranium Backup Free is designed to help you backup your data and recover it when needed. There is no limit to the number of files within a single backup, and there is no limit to the number of backup sets too. Those backups can be stored either in the same computer they were created or in another computer in a network. Multiple destinations can be chosen for a faster and more efficient work. It is possible to save them as uncompressed copies of the files, or as ZIP/ZIP64 files with support for encryption. ISO files can be created as well.

Installation

Installing this product is very easy; it’s just like any ordinary program installation. It doesn’t include any additional software, and requires no configuration before the main installation, which finishes quick.

Uranium Backup can run perfectly under Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Server 2003, Server 2008, SBS 2011 and 7. It is compatible with both 32 and 64-bit versions.

Interface

The main interface is a bit dull, filled with text and very few graphics and colors. Below the menu bar and the toolbar you will find the main area, which is split into two windows. In the first one you can view the backup tasks you have created, and the in the second one you can view many details about them, such as last backup start, last completion, time taken for last execution, creation date and time, file path, file size, and a lot of other details. Depending on the selected category of the backup in the first window, the second one will change accordingly and show you the appropriate information. The categories are five: Items and Destinations, Scheduling, Options, Logging and Mail Report.

Pros

The destination sources can be more than one at a time; therefore you can send the backup to multiple computers in a network or upload it both to your server and your computer for extra security. These backups can be saved with or without compression, choosing between ZIP and ZIP64 compression modes. The supported encryption methods are AES 128, AES 192 and AES 256 bits, as well as Pkzip classic. Incremental backup is available, so that the newly created backups can contain only new or modified files since the last successful backup, in order to save space and time. When a specified number of backups has been reached, the older backups will be overwritten, depending on creation date.

Unicode support is provided, so it has no problem reading files or saving backups with special characters in their name.

Cons

The Free version is very limited. You can’t backup the whole partition, burn the backup on CD/DVD/Blu-Ray, has no support for backing up Tapes and has size limit for every backup. You also cannot backup SQL Server databases or upload the backups in an FTP server. These are just some of the restrictions that are placed in the Free version of Uranium Backup.

Sometimes there are balloon tips that show text in a different language than English. Translation errors exist too, both in the program and in the product’s homepage.

Alternatives

Cobian Backup, Comodo Backup and Areca Backup are three freeware that will do a very good job in keeping your files and folders safe, by creating backups easily. They have some differences in their features, for example the only one of them that has support for burning the backups on CD/DVD is Comodo Backup, but all of them have a few features that Uranium Backup Free does not have, like uploading the backups to an FTP server.

Conclusion

Uranium Backup Free is not a really good choice for beginners, especially for those who are looking for a free solution. Paid editions of Uranium Backup definitely provide more functions, but the Free version is lacking a lot of crucial features and should generally be avoided, considering there are a lot of free, significantly better and easier to use backup programs.