Bullguard Backup 8.5 review

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Verdict:

If the local backup is useful and the 10GB online storage is sufficient, this is a solid choice for anyone with two or three PCs.

Review Date: 8 Jul 2009

Price when reviewed: inc VAT per year

Reviewed By: Ben Pitt

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

Bullguard Backup is the only service here that can back up to local storage such as DVD or an external hard disk as well as online.

That's ideal if you want secure backups of your important documents but prefer to back up larger files such as video-editing projects locally. The downside is that the standard 10GB online capacity is stingy. Larger capacities are expensive, too. Each account supports three PCs, which should be enough for most homes.

The online storage appears as a virtual drive in My Computer for simple drag-and-drop operations in both directions. Otherwise, Bullguard Backup looks like a conventional backup application. It looks clean and inviting, with a straightforward walkthrough for creating backup jobs, but encryption is disabled by default, which is disconcerting.

Backups are run according to a schedule or when the PC is idle. Manually kick-starting a backup takes couple of clicks, but there's no way to throttle uploads. The options to keep older versions of files are comprehensive, with the time specified in days, weeks, months or years and an optional maximum file size limit. Older versions use up online storage capacity, so it's worth being careful with the setting.

File restores via the virtual drive or the control panel were generally straightforward, but recovering older versions of a file was less so; we had to delve through folders arranged by date to find the file we wanted, rather than being offered a list of versions of the file. Web access to the online drive is also available, but the interface is extremely basic and is unavailable for encrypted backups.

There's nothing in the way of innovative features, but we really appreciate being able to back up to online storage, external hard disks and DVD, all from the same application.

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