HomePCBackup review

HomePCBackup is a newcomer to our reviews section. This UK-based online backup provider charges a reasonable £4.95 a month for unlimited storage. It comes across as friendly and approachable – a contact phone number is displayed clearly in the About section of the client software, for example.

As usual, it suggests various folders to back up during setup, including the Outlook mail archive, the contents of your Desktop and Documents folders and your IE Favourites. Alternatively, clicking the Advanced button takes you to a tree view of the hard disk. You can choose specific folders to add or even entire disk partitions, external disks and content from mapped network locations.

Next, it prompts to set a schedule. By default, backups will be made every day, but the client can be configured to only start them once or twice a week. Continuous backups are also possible but it’s only offered later from the Settings menu. There are options for off-line backups and the creation of Windows Volume Shadow Copies – which takes snapshots of disk partitions – but these features are poorly documented. Once a backup is in progress, it can be interrupted via HomePCBackup’s notification area icon, but there aren’t any options for throttling the speed of backups.

HomePCBackup’s web interface leaves a lot to be desired. Backed up files can be browsed in a tree structure, and it’s possible to select the backup date (with 14 days of previous versions retained), search for files using advanced options, delete them and restore them. However, choosing to restore launches a Java applet, whereupon the files to be restored must be re-selected from a new tree view. It also asks for an encryption key. It’s actually the same as the password, but this isn’t immediately clear.

HomePCBackup is mostly easy to use, but we’d prefer more documentation as and a much more polished web interface. Livedrive Backup costs the same and has more features.