Paragon Backup and Recovery 2014 Free Windows 7 Home Yes, I know how differential and incremental backups work against a base full backup image. However, PB&R 2014 Free wants me to select a full backup against which the diff or incr backup is based - BEFORE that full backup exists. It wants me to select a full backup as the base. Well, next week's full backup won't exist for me to choose next week's incrementals or differentials. The week after that won't yet have an existing full backup from which to choose. How can I schedule incremental or differential backups when there has yet to be created a full backup for next week, the week after that, the month after that, and so on? If they require me to wait until a full backup is created next week before I can base incrementals for that week off a full backup (i.e., they want to create another incremental backup job or edit an existing one each week) then they are nuts. The point of scheduling backups is so you don't have to be there to perform manual operations. Do they really think I'm going to create just 1 full backup and base weeks and months of incrementals or differentials off that 1 full backup that is ancient? Do they really think that I want to create a highly fragile chain of backups from 1 full backup through dozens or hundreds of incrementals? If I create an incremental or differential backup job then *it* should know that the first one in the chain must be a full backup, not ask for a full backup that doesn't yet exist. Apparently the free version is highly crippled and doesn't really allowed scheduled incremental or differential backups. You have to wait until you do the full backup upon which those incrementals or differentials are based, which means you have to wait until after the full backup has been created before you can define yet another backup job to get scheduled for that week for the following incrementals or differentials. How can anyone not realize that the first backup for incrementals or differentials must instead be a full backup - so that there is a full backup upon which to base the following incremental or differential backups? Seems yet another cripple in the freeware version so the only scheduled backups you can perform are only full backups - unless you're so stupid as to create 1 full backup and follow with a chain of dozens or hundreds of following incrementals or differentials which makes for a highly fragile chain (one bad backup and the rest after that are useless). Another failed trial of a free backup program that is too crippled or very poorly designed. UPDATE: After performing a full backup (to see if incrementals or diffs will even work), I got nailed with the "Unable to start Express Launcher" (see https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/unable-to-start-express-launcher.373202/ on another user reporting the same error). Couldn't use the Express toolbar button in the full program because it was grayed out. Exited the program and this error shows up. There might be a workaround or fix but remember this was for a fresh install (never was on my computer before) and after just 1 backup run. The program is too fragile. And it wants me to create overly long and fragile backup chains. No thanks.
Unfortunately Free version has only such scenario creating differential and incremental backups basing on specified full one. The Hard Disk Manager 15 Professional has Retention Wizard that allows to set a number of backups in chain to save and time to perform. Also it has scenario of FULL+DIFF and FULL+INC that performs full backup and bases all further chain on it. The "Unable to start Express Launcher" error most likely appears because some antivirus\firewall blocks this files or it is corrupted somehow and should be reinstalled.
