Easeus Todo backup is a free program that can create backup images of your hard drives or partitions and restore them on demand, and can also copy (clone) a hard disk/partition into another. It can process active primary (boot) partition via a bootable CD/DVD that it will create for you on-demand. Advanced options include mounting of disk image files for easy browsing of their contents, compression, and password encryption.Supports most file systems as well as most hard drive types.
Imagine the following scenario: you’ve freshly re-installed Windows, installed your crucial security apps and a handful of essential programs that you use; that you installed all the security patches and updates and driver updates; the "perfect", unadulterated state that you would love to be able to go back to if problems arise or something happens that decreases your system’s performance.
Another scenario: you wake up one morning and find that your computer is not booting. After running your PC manufacturer’s built-in diagnostic utility, you are heartened to find that there is apparently nothing wrong with the hard drive surface and that the problem is software-related. You wish that you could go back to a previous state when things were working swimmingly.
What both scenarios above have in common, of course, is that you can use a disk-imaging app such as Easeus Todo backup to solve both situations by creating backup images of your hard drive partitions and restoring them later when you need to.
SEVEN things I like about this program:
- Creates its own bootable disk: to enable booting into the program and restoring the active primary boot partitions. This is great because (a) it is so easy and quick, and (b) a number of freeware hard disk imaging programs that I’ve seen simply (and strangely) do not support boot partition restoration.
- Mounts image files: for quick browsing of files/contents. Read only.
- Offers file-by-file copying or sector-by-sector: unless you expressly want the latter, the former (file-by-file) is faster. It is also more user-friendly if restoring to a larger hard drive.
- Backup straight to CD/DVD: and will split the image file by appropriately sized chunks.
- Free for both personal and business use.
- The help file: is excellent and informative beyond what I would have expected, and thus warrants a mention.
- The interface design: simple, clean easy to use.
More features:
- Clone disk: very useful if you are upgrading to a larger hard drive and want to move all the data over.
- Compresses and/or password encrypts image files: optional.
- SupportsWindows server 03 and 08. I mention this because it is apparently a unique feature esp .among freeware programs of this kind.
- Supported file systems: FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS.
- Supported partition sizes: minimum 2 gigs, max 1.5 TB.
- Supported hard drive types: IDE, SATA, SCSI, USB removable disk, and Firewire disks
The verdict: this program inspires confidence if only because it is from the same people that gave us the excellent EASEUS Partition Master (one of my favorite free disk partitioning programs). It manages to combine advanced features with a really simple interface design that both novices and advanced users will appreciate.
I also like the fact that this program can create bootable media quickly and that it can be easily booted into. No hunting around the internet to figure out how to install it into BartPE or something like it.
But the best thing about it is that it does the job and does it well. Recommended.
Version Tested: 1.0
Compatibility: Windows 2000 (SP4), XP (32 and 64 bit), Vista (32 and 64 bit), Server 2003 (32 and 64 bit), and Server 2008 (32 and 64 bit).
Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 35.3 megs).
i have to say is the best antivirus i install on my computer keep my computer...
Easeus Todo backup is probably a very good program for certain tasks,but,IMHO,it suffers from the two major drawbacks that a lot of disk imaging programs have,these are 1. You cannot image to a smaller disk/partition,which is what I frequently do. 2. If you clone a smaller disk/partition to a larger one,the target disk/partition ends up as small as the source disk/partition. I still use a Ghost 2003 boot disc to image my drives/partitions as it doesn’t have these issues. I also note in the review that the Bart PE boot disc is mentioned. I have been using the Bart PE disc to image to my external drives using FreeFileSync,works both ways in my testing so far. Just put the portable version of FreeFileSync on your drives (any drive/partition will do) as you can’t integrate FreeFileSync into a Bart PE disc I don’t think,then when you run Bart PE,use A43 File Manager on Bart PE to navigate to the FreeFileSync exe. and run it,you can then do an incremental backup,works great so far in my testing and very quick because it’s incremental. (!Check the drive/partition letters before running a backup please if you use this method,as an external disk will put them out of order!) I realise you need a Bart PE disk with A43 on it to do this,but I’m sure many readers will already have such a disc. In all fairness to Easeus Todo it’s a very good program and also free,it’s just no good to me really,but no doubt others will make good use of it.
2. If you clone a smaller disk/partition to a larger one,the target disk/partition ends up as small as the source disk/partition.
I guess I am missing something in the logic–if it’s true that the target disk partition becomes the image size partition, then simply open Partition Manger and resize the pseudo-new partition. Yes? No?
It is a free backup utility for Windows that sports many backup related features. Apart from the regular backup and restore options, it lets you clone your hard disk drive easily. Users can create bootable CD to restore the drive at any point of time. see more on this page
Yes Jasray,you could indeed re-size the destination partition back to it’s actual size after imaging to a larger partition,but I personally don’t want to be messing around with that when tools like Ghost 2003 don’t re-size in the first instance. As I said,good program,no doubt about it,but I personally can make images much easier and faster than using Easeus Todo. Anyways,you can’t image to a smaller disk/partition,which is a major problem,at least for me (and it will be for others,I’m sure). Also,say you were to image a 40GB disk/partition to a 60GB disk/partition,then we re-size the 60GB disk/partition back to it’s real size,60GB,as you quite rightly say we could do,then we have a disaster and want to image the 60GB back to the 40GB disk/partition,what happens then? The answer is you can’t use your backup image because Easeus Todo will say the target disk/partition is too small,so that’s not much good really. You would have to leave the 60GB partition downsized to 40GB if you wanted the backup image to be usable,at least using Easeus Todo,thus throwing away 20GB of disk space. I’m not trying to knock the program,far from it,it’s free and will be very useful to a lot of people,I’m just trying to point out it’s shortcomings. Imaging to a smaller disk/partition is a necessity in this sort of program IMHO.
If the minimum partition size is 2GB, and this supports FAT12 (floppy) partitions and FAT16 (MAXIMUM size 2GB), will this NOT work on FAT16 partitions <2GB? (for example, working with a FAT16 drive of 500MB?)
1) One: This program did not do well on my main XP Pro installation, which is very heavily installed, jamming it up.
2) two: It did not work when installed on an XP Pro system installed on Drive-2 which is on a Promise SATA 300 TX3+ secondary controller, presumably trying to access the disk by its own interface.
It did work OK on my secondary XP Pro installation on Disk0 Primary3 which is on the motherboard controller.
I agree, this tool inspires confidence because it is done by the same (chinese?) authors of Eaesus Partition Master (they probably created this one because the Partition Master licence is not free for professionals).
The GUI is a real clone of Acronis True Image (in an old but fully fonctional under XP version 9.0 rebranded Cloneur Expert for the french market). The steps, screens and final files sizes are very close…
Cloning from Windows is possible but not restoration (of a secondary partition, of course, the windows one is locked and can only be restored through the Bootable CD.
The bootable CD proposed 4 display mode, but the 1024×800 crashed for me.
I have to test it longer to check reliabilty in bad situation…exactly when it is supposed to be used and save your (digital) life.
Anybody tried FOG? http://www.fogproject.org Looks like an awesome compilation of open source tools, although admittedly designed for those with larger cloning needs.
I am unable to use this normally like Acronis, Macrium,or Paragon. It keeps saying that it fails disc check, and only will do sector by sector. I have changed the areas eq temp, as recommended on the site, but so far cannot make it work as expected. Nice interface. Sure wish that it would work. Maybe in the future it will be ready for primetime.
Totally did the job! I copied one 1TB drive to another. Cloned the OS and all of the applications flawlessly. Worked as well as the Paragon program I used before. Best free thing I’ve ever downloaded.
Watch out for the License.. it’s NOT free for commercial/business use.
EASEUS Todo Backup 1.0 is for private, noncommercial, home computer use. EASEUS Todo Backup 1.0 within any organization or for noncommercial purpose is also allowed.
This is shown on their website, for users going from a smaller to larger HDD.
EASEUS Todo Backup is useful if you want to replace the older smaller hard disk by a newer larger hard disk without reinstalling the operating system and applications once again.
One negative I’ve found with this program is that both my attempts to create a bootable CD with it have failed to create a bootable CD.
On the Plus side I found that Easus ToDo backup has the option to restore MBR & Track0. On this computer, my main windows XP Pro installation did not boot after installing either XOSL1 or XOSL2 on the first hard drive. Why?=I don’t know. On another computer windows XP Pro & Windows 200 get on OK with XOSL2. I think it must be something I have installed on this XP system: It fails at the point the GUI tries to start(when the screen goes light blue.)
I found I could get out of this situation by using either MBRtool, which runs on a dos622 floppy to restore MBR & track0, or That Easus ToDo backup has the option to restore MBR & Track0. that saved me from contemplating reinstalling every on this installation of WXP Pro, which would be very very time consuming.
I used the program itself to create the rescue disk. As it didn’t ‘work’ for me I’ve since removed the Todo backup software from my laptop. Currently I’m using Paragon’s recently released Backup & Recovery free edition (http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/) – as it has the widest range of backup & recovery options at the moment. Amongst the free image backup software, Paragon is the only one that can do differential backups; all others can only do full backups. And, also it is the only one that can create a bootable USB/flash drive. For me it was also important Windows 7 support as I am planning to upgrade soon.
thank you
Hi Samer,
This is Bennie from EaseUS Software Company.
Thanks for writing such a great review for EaseUS Todo Backup.
The latest version, EaseUS Todo Backup Free 3.0, has been released recently with many new features, such as differential backup, dynamic disk backup and one-click system backup, etc.
I’m wondering whether you can update this review or write a new one for the 3.0 version.
Full feature: http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm
If you are interested in giving away the commercial version of Todo Backup, we would be glad to do that.
Thanks in advance!
Have a nice day.
–
Best regards
Bennie
Chengdu Yiwo Tech Co., Ltd.
http://www.easeus.com
http://www.partition-tool.com
http://www.todo-backup.com