Labs

The first time we ran Paragon Drive Backup, we thought we'd installed a disk partitioner by mistake. Once you get past the off-puttingly diagrammatic layout, it does everything you'd expect of a disk imaging and backup program. You can back up an entire disk or partition or particular files and folders. After your first backup, you can go incremental.

As well as writing a bootable rescue CD, you can create a 'backup

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capsule' on your hard disk, from which you can boot and restore the drive if your main version of Windows fails. The new File-Level backup feature ensures you can make copies even of files that are in use, so there's no need to worry that any files aren't backed up because they were open for editing at the time. Also interesting is Adaptive Restore, which allows you to copy the Windows installation of one PC onto the hard disk of another, even if the hardware is different - a useful way to help with upgrading to a new PC.

Aside from the core backup functions and the extras we've mentioned, Paragon has a more technical feel than the other two imaging programs, but in a good way, with extra tasks supported such as hiding partitions or manually updating the master boot record. Most users will still be better off with the easy to use Acronis True Image, but if you feel you can live without hand-holding features like one-click protection and Try&Decide, this versatile program is very good value.