« Return to: Cover Story: Tools for Trouble-Free Computing
| File Backup Program | Street price (3/1/02) | Supported operating systems | Features | Comments |
| Dantz Retrospect Express 5.6 | $49 | Windows 95/98/NT 4.0/Me/2000/XP | Full or partial backups to a variety of media, including tape, disk, recordable CD, and recordable DVD. | Does modified file backups, allowing you to recover the state your drive was in at the time of the last backup. Don't plan on using this software without reading the manual. |
| Iomega QuikSync 3 | $40 | Windows 95/98/NT 4.0/Me/2000/XP; Mac OS 8.5.1 and higher | Backs up files to your hard drive in the background while you continue to work. Includes a scheduler. | QuickSync backs up to disk (including all Iomega removable products) but depends on your drive's packet-writing software to enable it to back up to CD-R/RW. |
| NewTech Infosystems Backup Now 2.5.1 | $70 | Windows 95/98/NT 4.0/Me/2000/XP | Backs up image/partition or individual files and folders to recordable CD media. Includes a scheduler. | As easy to use as BackUp MyPC, but we saw several shortcomings. If it fails to back up a single file, it doesn't mark the files that it did back up. |
| Best Buy Stomp BackUp MyPC | $79 | Windows 98SE/NT 4.0 (SP4 or higher) /Me/2000/XP | Full or incremental backups to a variety of media, including tape, disk, recordable CD, and recordable DVD. | Veritas Backup Exec's heir wins top honors because it makes backup routines simple to set up, via wizards or versatile dialog boxes. Allows one-button backup and restore. |
| Defragger | Street price (3/1/02) | Supported operating systems | Features | Comments |
| Ontrack SystemSuite 4 JetDefrag | $60 | Windows 95/98/NT 4.0/Me/2000/XP | Has defragmenting utility and scheduler. | Not as fancy or as pretty as Speed Disk, but it's simple to use. |
| Symantec Norton SystemWorks 2002 Speed Disk | $70 | Windows 98/NT 4.0/Me/2000/XP | Has defragmenting utility and scheduler. | Includes an easy-to-use scheduler. Pretty to look at, with lots of bells and whistles. |
| Best Bet Windows XP Disk Defragmenter | Bundled with Microsoft Windows XP | Windows XP | Has defragmenting utility. | Fast, easy to use, and included with Windows. Scheduling is possible, but difficult. |
How We Test: We ran PC WorldBench 4 benchmarking software on a 1.5-GHz Pentium 4 system with 256MB of RAM, Windows XP Professional, and a fragmented 54.26GB drive. Then we installed and ran a defragmentation program, and ran PC WorldBench 4 again.