EaseUS has asked me to review their software, and there are some free licenses for Forums viewers and commenters.
To start, EaseUS is a well recognized firm. It provides freeware for ToDo Backup Home only, with limited features, and trialware (full featured). The payware is priced at about 50% of software like Acronis. Also, there are different versions with various additional features. These can be viewed and compared here (scroll to mid page):
http://www.easeus.com/backup/
For just the features of the Home version, I arranged their spread sheet a bit.
ToDo Backup 5.8 Home:
New Features and Improvements:
“New features
Support to create Emergency disk with Windows ADK in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012
Now the Mail Subject and Sender Display Name are customizable in Notification
Outlook backup image can be opened in Windows Explorer with EaseUS Todo Backup installed
Improvements
Fixed VSS incompatibility issue with other backup software
Fixed ask for reactivation after disk replaced” – per User Guide
Pros:
Has many features.
It is very usable as a free alternative to payware backup products. The same for the payware Home version. It has a good User Manual which really should be read and understood before use.
There is a “Snapshot” mode. This is a fast, but not fully stable image. It is useful (fast) mode to use before installing say, new software. It is not meant for longer term backups.
It will clone and also do sector by sector backup which is a disk image, but the sector by sector takes a long time (it will with payware also).
Supports email backup (see the table above).
Cons:
It isn’t clear whether you are cloning or creating a disk image. If you are not creating a sector by sector backup, then you are cloning. If you choose to do a sector by sector backup (disk image), you should first do a chkdsk /f /r . This will require a reboot. More on this later.
It does not support recovery to dissimilar hardware. This is present in other EaseUS backup software.
It does not support full dynamic volume backup/restore/clone.
A good deal of care has to be exercised when setting up the software for use. You must read the User Manual to get maximum benefit from the software.
If you’re fussy about speed, you should (before imaging your disk) get rid of software you don’t use, clean the registry, do a few online viral/malware scans (I’ve got links to them in other articles I’ve written), get rid of duped .dll files, and defrag your HDD and registry. Then do the disk image.
OSs supported are in the table above. You can read about ToDo Backup Home and other software on the EaseUS website: http://www.easeus.com/
In summary, is it worth $29.00? That’s up to you to decide, but I think it is. An alternative strategy is getting other payware and updating every 2 years, or by waiting for holiday deals. It’s up to you to decide which features you need for your system by weighing the full table at the link above.
As I mentioned at the outset, for reviewing this software, EaseUS has agreed to supply a limited number of licenses. It will be on a “first come first serve” basis.
Here’s how to get one:
Supply me (via Private Message (pm) your name and email address. I won’t keep or use/misuse them in any way except to forward to EaseUS. Your download and licensing info will come from EaseUS, not me.
I will notify those whose names/email info I’m submitting to EaseUS by pm.
I will also notify when request submission is over on this post.
Be sure to check your email as well as your spam/junk folder for email from EaseUS.
I take no responsibility for any data lost/damaged, etc. by any software I review, and my helping with the licenses is without financial consideration by/for members or EaseUS. I’m only doing it as part of my volunteer job here at WC. I'm not a professional software reviewer, so bear that in mind.
If you have backup tools, exercise due caution and make a backup before installing this (or any other software, for that matter).
You should read other (relevant) reviews of EaseUS ToDo Backup 5.8.0.0 build 20130321.