Paragon Backup and Recovery 16 is a reliable PC backup tool which comes packed with enterprise-level features and functionality, so it’s a little surprising to find Paragon Software are giving it away for free until November 1st.

It’s true, though. Download, install, create a free MyParagon account (which means giving your email address, no phone number or physical address beyond a country) and you’ll be emailed a free license within seconds.

Why bother? Versatility is one of the program’s highlights. You’re able to back up everything from individual files and folders, to specific file types, individual partitions or entire systems, all with the minimum of clicks.

It’s all very configurable. You can run full, incremental or differential backup jobs, or your preferred combination, as well as setting a retention policy, schedule and more.

The program can archive your files to virtual disk formats including VMDK, VHDX, VHD and pVHD, convenient for mounting them in virtual machines.

A clean interface and well-designed wizards keep everything very easy to use

Not-so-usual restore options include “Restore with shrink” to recover data to smaller-than-the-original drives, like SSDs, or “Adaptive Restore” to restore Windows to different hardware.

Even the bootable recovery media delivers more than you might expect, including tools to help fix boot problems which may mean you don’t have to restore a previous backup at all.

What you don’t get is any specific cloud backup support beyond WebDAV via network shares, but otherwise Paragon Backup and Recovery 16 is an excellent package and well worth its current price of nothing-at-all. Go download it immediately.

Paragon Backup and Recovery 16 requires Windows 7 or later.