Labs

PerfectBackup, based in York, offers a free 1GB entry-level account and various monthly subscriptions, each with a £25 setup fee. The company offers plenty of freebies, including a remote setup service, 'seed' loads - where you make your initial backup to a faster medium, such as a USB hard disk, and courier it to PerfectBackup - and restores for huge backups. It provides 24-hour phone and email support and, uniquely, a £1

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million data guarantee for all customers, even those on the free account.

This is the only software on test that supports monthly as well as daily and weekly schedules. It's good to have, but we'd back up day-to-day documents far more regularly. It's also one of only two applications that can handle both online backups and backups to a local drive. Unlike BullGuard's service, it can save identical backups to both destinations in one operation, which is great for quick restores and maximum data safety.

PerfectBackup is one of the more complex programs here, providing advanced options such as detailed in-file delta settings. Frustratingly, though, it misses out on some more useful basic options, such as a bandwidth throttle. It was one of the fastest programs all-round in our test, producing a detailed log file in real time. There's no progress bar or ETA, though.

It's comparatively expensive, but a strong set of features makes PerfectBackup one of the better packages for more technical users.