Novabackup review

NovaBACKUP effectively combines file backup, disk imaging and online storage in one convenient package. It even offers continuous Privacy as detailed as every minute. However, once you exceed the “free” limit of 5 GB, online storage quickly becomes expensive.

NovaBACKUP features and user interface

The NovaBACKUP interface is efficient and uncluttered, although it looks a little old. I want the imaging not to need to start a separate module, but this is difficult. On the other hand, I like that NovaBACKUP supports the creation of Microsoft VHD and VHDX images. These formats can only be opened and searched with Windows itself if you never have NovaBACKUP at hand.

On the other hand, you are not found some features available if you use NovaBACKUP’s proprietary image format, such as incremental (all changes since the last backup) and differential (all changes since the original backup), as well as compressed images to save storage space. In general, I tend to use imaging for full (full) backups and file/folder backups for incremental changes—but people’s tastes vary.

As mentioned earlier, NovaBACKUP supports both file/folder-level backup in container files and imaging of drives and partitions. It also has a handy function for copying raw files (it does not create container files) if you just want to quickly duplicate some data to another location.

If you use NovaBACKUP’s online storage, you can select it as a destination, although you cannot select both local and online destinations for the same job. In this matter, as with many programs, you simply duplicate the work and choose a different goal.

NovaBACKUP offers many more options than the average user needs, showing his current computer folded. The short list includes: extremely precise file filtering (wildcards, attributes, date, etc.), log printing and email notifications, blowfish and various levels of AES encryption, network credentials and commands before and after execution.

NovaBACKUP also creates a boot disk for disaster recovery in matter this bad circumstance bites you. This is a much simpler process than last year when I tested NovaBACKUP PC for the first time and you had to visit Microsoft to download additional files. Now no such visit is required.

Note that NovaBACKUP does not give you the option to save the boot disk if you want to create an ISO image instead of burying it in its section of the ProgramData folder. Tip: After creation, copy the specified location in the text box, paste it into Windows Explorer and copy the ISO image to a more common location.

How much does NovaBACKUP cost?

The price you see in the first image below seems quite reasonable. However, you can get 5 GB for free from services such as Dropbox, Google and Sync.com . above 5 GB, things get expensive in a hurry.

Performance of the new backup

I’ve had some problems with NovaBACKUP in the past. When I first checked it a few months ago, the image backups were continuously failing at about 95%. NovaStor sent me a beta version which seems to have solved this problem.

Also note that I was told that there are several other backup programs that NovaBACKUP politely does not coexist with—Paragon Backup & Recovery is one of them, and as I found out after, Arcsoft’s ShadowProtect SPX. Few users have multiple backup programs with threads or schedulers running in the background, but if you are one of this minority, ignore NovaBACKUP.