Ah, a topic I think I'm relatively well qualified to answer
I've spent far, far too many hours looking at backup software and think I've tried almost everything on the market by now. It's taken me a long time to find something I actually like and meets my needs - most software I've tried was good, but missing something crucial for me.
On my main machines, I run
Bvckup2:
Bvckup 2 | Simple fast backup. This is a very lightweight and fast piece of software designed for one task - copying your data as quickly and reliably as possible. It's designed to backup files in real-time as soon as they are modified. It doesn't use any propriety file formats or recovery tools as it just copies the files across and updates them when needed. It doesn't support versioning, although does have basic archive support for deleted files. It might not meet all your needs, but it's a super polished, high-quality piece of software. This works well for me, as I back up onto a server which then does the snapshots and versioning internally. The server then backs itself up weekly to an external HDD using Veeam Endpoint Backup Free (see below!). Support is provided by email, but the software is written by only a handful of developers at most and they're based in Switzerland with excellent English - I've spoken with them before and they're super helpful and know the software inside out.
On other machines, I run
Veeam Endpoint Backup Free: Free Windows Backup for Endpoints, Servers, Desktops - Veeam Agent for Windows. This is the free variant of Veeam's excellent server backup software that is probably one of the most popular enterprise backup programs around (although compared to some enterprise backup software it's not hard to be better. Symantec BackupExec I'm looking at you......), so Veeam has plenty of experience. Although it's free, it's the same enterprise grade engine under the hood. This will probably be a better fit for you as it meets most of you're requirements in your original post. It has built in compression and deduplication features to reduce backup space, and I've been running it for 2 years now and have had no issues. Email notifications when the backups finish are useful too. It supports incremental/differential backups as you want, and can make a recovery USB.
There is a paid version of Veeam Endpoint which offers 365x24x7 phone support, but it's a minimum order quantity of 5, and at ~$40/year/computer isn't cheap. But the free version contains all the same features and support is offered on a "best case" scenario, and the Veeam team will try their best to fix any issues you have, but they obviously can't guarantee response times etc.
Usually free product comes without support at all. We like to do more, even for a free product. Here at Veeam we value customer feedback and moreover it’s one of the main motivation factors to keep making best backup solutions.
Let’s make sure we are on the same page from the very beginning: free product support is provided on best effort basis, which means there is no SLA on responses like with regular support for our paid products. This does not mean your submissions will go nowhere: every single case is still carefully reviewed by our Support, Quality Assurance and Product Management.
If you need help, all the options available to you are conveniently listed in the Support tab of Veeam Endpoint Backup’s Control Panel:
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With Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE we introduced a new way of providing support for a free product: just click the Technical support button and fill the case directly from the Endpoint’s user interface. Give us your email address and a short description the problem and hit Submit Case - and our support team will receive a case with the required debug logs attached.
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Besides, always available to you are our extensive Online Help, and an extremely active Community Forum with the Product Management team and other users, ready to help you in the time of need!
Technical Support for Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE
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As for other software, well, I haven't found anything else that I like....
- Macrium is fine for doing whole disk images, but I found their automated backups lacking.
- Acronis is expensive for what it offers, and I used it at a job a few years ago and it wasn't amazing.
- I had similar issues with EaseUS as you describe and didn't trust its reliability.
- I tried Genie Timeline Home quite a few years ago so can't comment on newer versions but I didn't like its UI and found it missing some features
- Cobian Backup used to be great, but it's old now and the developer sold the code to someone else who has abandoned it which is a shame
- The built in File History and backup tools in Windows suck. They're awful, and I've had many issues getting backups to even run in the first place
If you're looking to backup to the cloud, then Duplicati is a good choice, although it's technically still in beta:
Duplicati
as to whether my chipset (Intel Core i3 7100U Kaby Lake) supports it? (a whole other matter!) I have a HP Pavilion x360 15-br003na model!
) & just swap out for SSD, & get case for HDD to use as portable storage!? Was thinking of buying a "Samsung SSD 860 EVO 2.5 250GB" for the job.
trying to figure out how I was going go about utilising an SSD in my system!