Last week I stumbled upon a great little backup application called Storegrid and for the first time I'm now backing up critical files. I've always known the importance of backing-up and have been bitten hard by a hard-drive crash, and whilst I created a Linux file server with a mirrored array of HDD's to protect my data in future, I still hadn't backed-up my desktop PC. This is because Windows Backup is so clumsy. Now I've found Storegrid I'm backing-up regularly because it makes it so simple.

Storegrid boasts that it is P2P backup, which is the protocol by which it allows a server / client setup. The idea is that you can install Storegrid on multiple desktops and backup files from one client onto the unused space of another client. But I prefer the more traditional backup of all files on one system, in my case the file server, which Storegrid works equally well for. If you only have one PC you can still use Storegrid to backup to an external hard drive or any other physical disk.

Storegrid has a free version for windows which does everything I need. It runs through a web browser (it actually uses Apache and PHP) so it's very user friendly and even support Opera. It would be nice if they had a free Linux version so I could install it on my file server. But because it doesn't, I have had to configure Storegrid to backup to a mapped network drive. Storegrid can run as a service or a stand-alone application. Obviously to backup to a mapped network drive you can't install it as a service (it doesn't support UNC paths).

Storegrid allows you to keep multiple versions of a backup which takes the hassles out of creating multiple full and incremental backup jobs like you would in Windows Backup.

I think Storegrid would also be great in a corporate environment, because it allows users to backup their files from their desktop PC's and also restore them without requiring IT support. The only problem would be restricting the volume of files a client could backup.

So, in case you couldn't guess, I highly recommend Storegrid to anyone who knows they should be backing-up their files but haven't bothered due to the hassle.