What OS? Windows, OSX, Linux, or...? On Windows, my favorite by far is ShadowProtect. It's actually a sector-by-sector backup that pretends to be a file-by-fil

What OS? Windows, OSX, Linux, or...? On Windows, my favorite by far is ShadowProtect. It's actually a sector-by-sector backup that pretends to be a file-by-file backup when you restore a file. What's great about this is when you modify a huge file, it only backs up the actual sectors you changed. (Most Windows backup programs detect changes on a file-by-file basis.) I have it set to run a full incremental backup every 15 minutes; the backup typically takes 15-30 seconds and is unnoticeable when it happens. Even though it's a sector backup, you can still restore specific files or do a complete system recovery, either to the same/compatible device or with a Hardware Independent Restore to different hardware. I've done each of these many times. On OSX, I'm using Time Machine, but I wish there were something as good as ShadowProtect. It is a bummer when I touch a few sectors in a huge file like a VM disk image, and the best Time Machine can do is back up the entire file again.