Tip: Protect your PC with Paragon Backup & Recovery (Advanced) Free 2011

You can never have too many backups, and when it comes to backing up you need two different types of backup tools for the best results. When it comes to protecting your precious files -- documents, emails, photos and the like -- either use Windows' own built-in backup tool or, if you want full control over your backup, choose GFI Backup Home Edition instead.

That protects your data, but what about Windows, your programs and your program settings? Do you want to spend hours reinstalling Windows and getting everything set up again in the event of disaster? Or would you prefer to spend 15 minutes or so restoring a recent backup of your computer while it was in perfect working order? Of course you'd prefer the latter, which is where a drive-imaging tool like Paragon Backup & Recovery (Advanced) Free 2011 comes in.

As the name implies, a drive-imaging tool takes an exact image, or snapshot, of your drive, which is stored on another medium. Paragon's free edition of its backup tool has everything you need to take an image of your hard drive, then update it at regular intervals without filling up your backup drive.

The program is simple to use thanks to the existence of various wizards, and offers all the functionality you could possibly need: it backs up to just about any medium (you can even create a reserved area of drive space on your backup  -- known as a Backup Capsule -- specifically for storing your backups on), and supports "differential" backups. This basically keeps the backup size down by comparing your latest backup with previous backups and only recording the changes. Differential backups are also much quicker to process, and can be scheduled to run automatically, so you've always got access to a recent backup of your system in good working order.

Restoring your backup is simple, too: the 2011 version now allows you to restore individual partitions or even files and folders from your image quickly and painlessly, while the program also comes with a rescue boot disc creator that will allow you to restore your image even if Windows won't boot.

Need to repartition your drives prior to imaging them? Paragon 2011 has all the partitioning tools you need, and fans of virtualization software will be interested to learn the program can even convert your physical drive into a virtual disk suitable for use in programs like Microsoft Virtual PC, VMWare or VirtualBox.

Paragon Backup & Recovery (Advanced) Free 2011 works in Windows 2000 SP4, XP SP2/SP3, Vista and Windows 7, and is free for personal and non-commercial use. It works with just about any drive and file system, including drives over 2TB in size, and it now supports USB 3.0 for even faster drive transfer speeds.