Backup Software for Windows Endpoints and Servers

Updated: October 2026

A laptop dies on a Tuesday, and the first question is what the backup can bring back: the whole machine, or just some of its files. The answer depends on the tool, and Windows' built-in options answer it differently than people expect. Here's how Windows backup software differs, what Windows already includes, and how to pick one tool you can standardise on across endpoints and servers.

TL;DR

• Image backup captures the whole disk and restores a working machine. File backup captures folders and restores documents. Endpoints and servers usually need the first; users mostly ask for the second.
• Windows' own tools don't cover a fleet. The Windows Backup app syncs folders and settings to a personal OneDrive account. File History versions libraries to a drive. The classic system image tool has been deprecated since Windows 10 version 1709.
• The tools techs standardise on split by licensing and management: Veeam Agent for Windows, Acronis, Macrium Reflect X, MSP360, Iperius, and the open-source UrBackup and Duplicati.
• What separates them is bare-metal restore to different hardware, application-aware snapshots, encryption, immutable targets and a central console. Price models range from free to per-machine subscriptions to perpetual licences.
• Pick by situation, then prove it with a restore test. A backup nobody has restored from is a hypothesis.

What Backup Software Has to Do on Windows

Windows backup software does two different jobs. Arguments about tools often come down to which job matters to you.

An image backup copies the disk at the block level: the operating system, installed apps, drivers, settings and data. Restoring it gives you a machine that boots. You need boot media to get there, because the disk you're restoring to is empty.

A file-level backup copies chosen folders. It's lighter, faster to search and easier to restore one spreadsheet from. It won't bring back a machine, because it never captured one.

Both depend on the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). VSS freezes a consistent point-in-time view of a volume, so the backup doesn't copy a database halfway through a write. Tools that go one step further and tell SQL Server or Exchange to flush their data first are called application-aware.

Then come versions. A backup that keeps only the latest copy will faithfully back up yesterday's encrypted files. Incremental and differential chains decide how many restore points you keep and how long a restore takes. Our guide to incremental vs differential backup walks through the storage math.

Where the Backups Go

The tool decides how a backup is made. The target decides whether it survives the same bad day as the machine.

A local disk or USB drive is fast and cheap, and it sits next to the thing it protects. Fire, theft and ransomware that can see mapped drives all take it out together.

A NAS or network share centralises storage for an office. Every third-party tool below can write to one. It also becomes the single most valuable box on the network, so give it its own credentials, keep it off the domain where you can, and don't map it as a drive letter on user machines.

Object storage such as Amazon S3, Azure Blob, Wasabi or Backblaze B2 gives you an off-site copy without shipping disks. Several of these services support write-once retention locks, which keep a copy from being deleted or changed until its retention date passes, even by an account with full rights.

A vendor's own cloud is the simplest option when the tool includes it, at the price of tying your backups to that vendor's storage.

A pattern that works for a typical small fleet: nightly images to a NAS on site, a copy to object storage off site with a retention lock, and a restore test on a schedule. That's the 3-2-1 idea with one copy that can't be deleted.

What Windows Includes, and What It Doesn't

Windows ships with three backup features and one server tool. None of them is built to protect a fleet.

The Windows Backup app in Windows 11 backs up the Desktop, Documents, Pictures, Videos and Music folders, a list of installed apps, and settings such as Wi-Fi passwords and personalisation. It stores all of it in OneDrive. Microsoft's support page is explicit on two limits: it isn't a full system image, and it works with personal Microsoft accounts only, not work or school accounts.

File History keeps versions of your libraries on an external drive or a network location. Users restore a file by right-clicking a folder and choosing Restore previous versions. It's useful for "I overwrote the report" tickets. It doesn't restore Windows.

The System Image Backup tool, also known as Backup and Restore (Windows 7) in Control Panel, still appears on many machines. It has been on Microsoft's deprecated features list since Windows 10 version 1709. Microsoft's own mitigation note says to look for a third-party product for full-disk backup.

On servers, Windows Server Backup installs as a feature and runs from the console or the wbadmin command line. It can back up volumes, system state and bare-metal recovery data, and wbadmin start sysrecovery restores a full system from the Windows Recovery Environment. What it lacks is a central view. Each server has its own schedule, its own catalog and its own failures that nobody sees unless someone looks.

powershell
wbadmin get versions
wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:E: -include:C: -allCritical -quiet

The first line lists restore points on the local machine. The second runs a one-time backup of the C: volume plus everything needed for bare-metal recovery.

The Tools Techs Standardise On

The list below sticks to tools that back up Windows endpoints and servers and that show up repeatedly in admin threads. The order carries no ranking.

Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows

Veeam's agent backs up an entire computer, individual volumes or chosen folders. It writes to external drives, network shares, object storage and Veeam repositories. It builds recovery media on USB or as an ISO for bare-metal restores. There's a Free edition, and paid Workstation and Server editions. The agent also plugs into Veeam Backup & Replication, which is where central job management lives. Veeam's help center lists the current build as 13.1.1.700.

The naming confuses people. This r/sysadmin thread from March 2026 asks whether two office PCs need the full Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition or just the agent. The answer: the agent on each PC, pointed at a password-protected NAS share, with a recovery ISO per hardware model.

If the rest of your environment is already on Veeam, our Veeam Backup & Replication review covers the server side and its licensing.

Acronis

Acronis sells two different things under one brand. Acronis True Image is the home and prosumer product: full-machine images, bare-metal recovery, cloud storage and built-in anti-malware, sold by subscription. Acronis Cyber Protect is the business and service-provider platform with central management, and it's what a company fleet would run. Our Acronis Cyber Backup review covers that one.

Macrium Reflect X

Macrium Reflect built its reputation on a free edition that techs installed everywhere. That edition is gone. Macrium retired it, with security patches ending on 1 January 2024, and released Reflect X in October 2024. The product is still a strong image-and-clone tool. The change is licensing: new installs are paid, sold on term licences.

That shift is still producing tickets. In this r/techsupport thread from November 2025, a long-time user found the old version hard to download. A reply written on the company's behalf said the free version was stopped about two years earlier.

If your imaging runbook still says "install Macrium Free", it's time to rewrite that step.

MSP360 Backup

MSP360, formerly CloudBerry, does file-level and image-based backup on Windows, plus SQL Server, Hyper-V and VMware. Its model is bring-your-own-storage: you point it at Amazon S3, Azure, Wasabi or Google Cloud and pay that provider directly. There's a Free edition for personal workstations, a standalone Pro edition, and a managed version with a central web console. Our MSP360 review goes deeper.

Iperius Backup

Iperius is a Windows-only tool that covers a lot of ground in one install. It does drive imaging with incremental and differential change tracking, file backup, VMware ESXi, Hyper-V and Proxmox VMs, SQL Server and other databases, Microsoft 365, and tape. It's sold on perpetual licences, which is rarer now than it used to be.

UrBackup

UrBackup is open source under the AGPLv3+ and free for commercial use. A server runs on Windows, Linux, FreeBSD or a NAS. Clients on each machine send incremental file backups and full image backups, and a bootable restore stick handles bare-metal recovery. The server's web interface shows every client's status in one place. The project lists server 2.5.38, released 30 August 2026.

Duplicati

Duplicati is open-source, file-level backup. It encrypts data with AES-256 on the machine before upload, and it supports a long list of targets, from S3 and Azure Blob to SFTP and a local NAS. It doesn't make disk images, so it pairs with an imaging tool rather than replacing one. Duplicati Inc now sells paid plans with a central console on top of the free engine.

Windows Backup Software Compared

Capabilities as described on each vendor's or project's own pages, checked 30 September 2026. Editions change often, so confirm the specific feature on a trial before you commit a fleet to it.

What Separates One Tool From Another

Every tool on that list can copy files. The differences show up on the day you restore.

Bare-metal restore to different hardware. Restoring an image to the same laptop is easy. Restoring it to a replacement with a different storage controller is where tools diverge, because Windows needs the right drivers to boot. Look for recovery media that can inject drivers, and build it for each hardware model you run.

Application-aware snapshots. A crash-consistent image of a SQL Server is like pulling the power cord. It usually recovers. Application-aware processing asks the database to reach a clean state first, which removes the "usually".

Encryption and immutability. Backups hold everything an attacker wants, and ransomware crews go after them first. Encrypt at the source, keep the key somewhere other than the backup server, and send at least one copy to a target that can't be deleted before its retention runs out. Our breakdown of a ransomware attack shows where backups sit in that timeline.

A central console. Ten laptops each running their own schedule means ten places a failure can hide. A console that reports "last successful backup" per machine is what turns backup from a feature into a service.

Licensing that matches the fleet. Free and open-source tools cost time instead of money. Subscriptions track machine count. Perpetual licences look cheaper until the next major version.

Ask Leo's walkthrough of image vs file backups is a good explainer to hand to anyone who thinks copying the Documents folder counts as a backup plan.

How to Choose by Situation

One PC or a home office. Veeam Agent Free or UrBackup gives you full images to a NAS or external drive at no licence cost. Add File History or Duplicati if users want easy file restores.

An office of 10 to 50 PCs. The deciding factor is visibility. UrBackup's web interface, MSP360's managed edition or Acronis Cyber Protect all report per machine. Pick one, image every PC nightly and keep file versions for the folders people edit every day.

Windows servers. You need application-aware processing for SQL Server, Exchange or Active Directory, plus bare-metal restore. Veeam (agent plus Backup & Replication), Acronis Cyber Protect, Iperius and MSP360 all cover this. Windows Server Backup works for a single server if someone owns checking it.

An MSP backing up many clients. Multi-tenancy and per-client reporting matter more than any single feature. That's a different buying decision, covered in our guide to MSP backup solutions.

Microsoft 365 data. Imaging a laptop doesn't protect Exchange Online, OneDrive or SharePoint. Some suites, Iperius among them, sell a separate Microsoft 365 module. Either way it needs its own plan, which our Microsoft 365 backup guide covers.

A Worked Example: 25 PCs and Two Servers

Here's how the choice plays out for a typical small office. The numbers are illustrative, so swap in your own.

The office has 25 Windows 11 laptops, each with about 120 GB used, and two Windows servers: a file server with 1.5 TB of data and an application server running SQL Server with 200 GB. Users work mostly in shared folders and Microsoft 365.

Endpoints. Laptops get a full image once a week and incrementals every night. The image protects the machine; the incrementals protect the day's work that hasn't reached the file server. With compression, a first full image of 120 GB often lands well below that on disk, and nightly incrementals are a small fraction of it. Budget roughly 3 TB of NAS space for the laptop images and 30 days of restore points, then check the real figure after the first month.

Servers. The file server gets a nightly image plus file-level versions of the shares, so a deleted folder is a two-minute restore, not a full rebuild. The SQL Server gets application-aware backups and transaction log backups often enough to match the recovery point the business signed up for. Our explainer on RTO vs RPO shows how to turn that promise into a schedule.

Off-site. A nightly copy of the server backups goes to object storage with a 30-day retention lock. Laptop images can stay on site, because the laptops themselves rebuild from a standard image if the NAS is lost.

The tool. This office needs a central console, application-aware server backups and bare-metal restore. Veeam (agent plus Backup & Replication), Acronis Cyber Protect or MSP360's managed edition fit on features. UrBackup fits if the team is comfortable running its own server and handling SQL Server with native tools. The deciding question is who checks the console every morning.

Test a Restore Before You Need One

Every tool reports success on the backup. Only a restore tells you the backup works.

Run three kinds of test. Restore a single file every month, because that's the most common request. Restore a full image to spare hardware or a VM every quarter, because that's the request that matters most. After any change to hardware models or the tool itself, rebuild the recovery media and boot it once.

Write down how long the full restore took. That number is your real recovery time, whatever the policy says. Our guide to disaster recovery testing covers the test types and how often to run each.

What to Test During a Trial

Vendor feature lists all look alike. A two-week trial on real machines separates them. Run these six tests before you roll anything out.

The last test is the one tools fail most quietly. A laptop that hasn't backed up since it left for a conference looks the same as a healthy one on a dashboard that only shows failed jobs.

Replacing Macrium Free on Existing Machines

If older machines still run Macrium Reflect Free, plan the change instead of waiting for a failed backup to force it.

Start with an inventory: which machines have it, and where their images go. Existing images don't become useless the day you switch. Macrium says existing backups stay usable, and the reply in the r/techsupport thread above pointed owners of paid versions to its sales team for older downloads. Keep the last images until the new tool has at least one verified full backup of each machine.

Then pick the replacement by the job Macrium was doing. For imaging and cloning on a handful of machines, Veeam Agent Free, UrBackup or a Reflect X licence cover it. For a managed fleet, move to one of the console-based tools and retire the per-machine installs. Update your imaging runbook and your recovery media in the same change.

Rolling It Out Across Endpoints

Standardise on one tool per job: one imaging tool for every Windows machine, and one file-level tool if users need self-service restores. Two imaging tools means two restore procedures to remember at 7 a.m. on the worst day.

Build recovery media for each hardware model and store it where you can reach it without the network. Name backup jobs after the machine and the client or department, so the console reads like an inventory.

Then watch the results. Alert on the age of the last successful backup, not on job failures alone, because a job that never runs never fails. OpenFrame can run a script across a client's devices that reads each machine's last successful backup time and collect the output in one place. That turns "are we backed up?" into a list you can sort.

When a machine does die, reimaging is only half the job. If you decide to wipe instead of restore, our guide on how to factory reset Windows 11 covers the clean options.

The Short Version

Windows backup software splits into image tools that rebuild a machine and file tools that rebuild a folder. Windows' own features cover a single PC's documents, not a fleet, and the old system image tool is deprecated. For endpoints and servers, choose between Veeam Agent, Acronis, Macrium Reflect X, MSP360, Iperius, UrBackup and Duplicati based on bare-metal restore, application awareness, immutability, a central console and a licence model you can live with. Then restore from it before you need to.

For the plan around the tool, read our BCDR guide, then schedule your restore drills with the disaster recovery testing guide.