ShadowProtect SPX Desktop is a backup app for Windows and Linux that creates and restores only one kind of backup—the kind that creates an image of a complete disk partition, not individual files. Other backup apps can create both image backups and file backups, and some online backup services create file backups in the cloud or on your disk. ShadowProtect SPX Desktop may only perform one kind of backup, but it does that job so reliably it’s our Editors’ Choice winner for backup software. Other products and services are very good for file backup, but ShadowProtect SPX Desktop is the app to rely on to restore a complete system after a hardware failure or a malware attack. If you value your data, it should be your first line of defense.
A Long History of Reliability
I’ve been using different versions of ShadowProtect for more than 15 years without a single serious hiccup. That’s something I can’t say about any of its rivals. It’s rescued me from dozens of software and hardware mishaps. When you test software as often as I do, you inevitably come across apps that damage your files or your system. I’ve long since learned ShadowProtect’s app can undo the damage quickly, reliably, and easily. Additionally, if you ever have the bad luck of getting zapped by ransomware, ShadowProtect SPX Desktop is the best way to recover your system without paying anything to the bad guys.
ShadowProtect SPX Desktop works so reliably partly because it’s the consumer- and SOHO-level version of an extensive set of backup solutions designed for corporate and enterprise use. The same rock-solid technology that powers StorageCraft’s high-end backup systems also powers the lower-priced consumer version—reviewed here.
ShadowProtect’s major rival is Acronis Cyber Protect, formerly called Acronis TrueImage. ShadowProtect offers only image-based backups. Acronis, in contrast, offers image-based, file-based, and cloud-based backup on Acronis’s servers.
You can buy ShadowProtect SPX as a one-time purchase for $99. Subscription plans are available for Windows Server and other advanced versions. Acronis stopped offering one-time purchases earlier this year and now only offers subscription services starting at $44.99 per year for current students, with other options starting at $59.99 per year.
Solid, Mature, and Reliable
As an image-based backup app, ShadowProtect backs up an entire system, or one or more disks in a system, instead of backing up individual files. If you really care about your data, you’ll use both an image-based backup and a file-based backup method.
The reason? Sometimes having a file-based backup system makes it easier to recover an earlier version of a document, or to recover a file you wish you hadn’t deleted. I use and recommend both iDrive, an Editors’ Choice-winning service, and Dropbox for different kinds of file-based backup and syncing, and I use ShadowProtect SPX for recovering individual files from its backup images.
But ShadowProtect SPX is the only app I trust for restoring an entire system or an entire disk when something goes wrong. Its VirtualBoot feature lets me boot a backed-up image in a window on my desktop. This means if my hardware fails, I can launch my backed-up system on another machine and get my work done, even without restoring it. (See The Beginner’s Guide to PC Backup for how to get started.)
ShadowProtect runs only on Windows and Linux. Acronis Cyber Protect Home is available for more platforms, including macOS, iOS, and Android. Acronis’s backup software offers dozens of features ShadowProtect doesn’t even try to match. Over the years, however, I’ve had bad experiences with Acronis’ products, including backups that didn’t restore and, once, a system that wouldn’t boot after I uninstalled an Acronis app. A backup app needs to work all the time, with no ifs, ands, or buts. ShadowProtect SPX does exactly that.
Not for Beginners
One minor warning: If you’re seriously tech-challenged, and you don’t have enough confidence to click on a few menus to find the item you need, get someone’s help when you first install ShadowProtect SPX. This is a long-established app designed for both corporate and individual use. It uses a wizard interface for all operations, but you’ll need at least the minimal skills required to navigate to the drives or network shares you want to back up to and restore from. In the rest of this review, I’ll assume you have those minimal skills.
It takes around two minutes to set up a backup plan with ShadowProtect SPX, and then you don’t have to think about it again until you need to restore a system, disk, or file. The app’s three-pane interface is highly informative to experienced users, but beginners will be glad to have the overlay image that appears when you first run the app to explain the essential features.
The first thing you’ll need to do is create one or more Destinations for your backups, meaning local and USB-connected disks or network shares where you want to store your backups. Then you create backup plans for each destination, selecting the disk partitions you want to back up, the level of encryption you want for protecting your backup images, and a scheduling plan that lets you create or update your backups at intervals ranging from every 15 minutes to once a month, with options to back up only on certain days of the week. You can also create one-time backups you run only when you choose.
You can create full backups, which create an image of an entire disk partition, or full backups followed by incremental backups, which back up only files changed since the last full backup. With the second option, when you need to restore from a backup, you can zero in on the date and time of the incremental backup you want to use. Other options let you fine-tune the backup strategy so that the app deletes older generations of backups before creating new ones, so that you don’t run out of disk space when saving to a local or USB drive. Also, I recommend selecting the option that sends you an email notification when a backup operation encounters problems.
The only time you need the SPX app’s interface is when creating a backup plan or to look at a timeline showing the history of your backups. You can also use the interface to restore a drive from a backup or to perform a Virtual Boot that launches your backup as a complete system inside a window. You don’t need the interface to perform these functions, however; you can also right-click on a ShadowProtect image file to open or boot it.
How to Recover Anything
ShadowProtect offers three ways to recover data from a backup image.
First, you can mount a backup image so it appears as a drive letter on your Windows system, and you then simply drag files or folders from the mounted image to any folder in your system. One useful option lets you mount the backup image as a writeable image, which lets you drag files into the image for use in the future. The actual image file isn’t changed, but the app creates a supplementary file that contains the files that will be added to the image the next time you mount it.
Second, you can use the app’s interface to restore any partition on your system other than the current boot partition. You won’t need to restart your machine before or after the restore. This method is useful for restoring non-booting drives you use for storing data, or, if you have a multi-boot system, you can use this method to restore one of your boot drives after you’ve booted into the other boot drive.
Third, you can boot from a USB drive or DVD-R disk that contains the ShadowProtect Recovery Environment. This is a bootable system you create from a download on StorageCraft’s web site. It’s what you use when you need to restore your Windows system drive and other drives because your original machine won’t boot, or when you want to transfer your system to a new machine. If you’re restoring to a different machine, you’ll probably need to choose the option to perform a hardware-independent restore. This means the app will remove any hardware-specific drivers from the backup image when restoring it to a new machine, so that when the restored system starts up, Windows will load the drivers needed by your new hardware.
Boot Up a Backup Image
ShadowProtect’s VirtualBoot feature—the feature that lets you boot up a backed-up system drive in a virtual machine—is a triumph of power and convenience. Before you use it, you must install one of the following: 1) the freeware VirtualBox, 2) Windows’ built-in but optional Hyper-V feature, or 3) VMware’s Vsphere hypervisor, typically used only in corporate settings.
If you want to use Windows’ Hyper-V, you must also download and install ShadowProtect’s Hyper-V plug-in. If you try to use VirtualBoot with Hyper-V and haven’t installed the ShadowProtect plug-in, you get an obscure message about an “unknown error,” so don’t say I didn’t warn you. I was able to use Hyper-V to boot up a backed-up image of my system disk in less than a minute.
To protect yourself from ransomware and other malware, you need to get into the habit of making backups on removable drives and detaching those drives from your system after a backup is complete. Doing so prevents ransomware from reaching out and encrypting them. If you’ve been smart enough to take these precautions, then you have a good chance of recovering from even the worst ransomware attack. Here’s how to do it through ShadowProtect’s VirtualBoot feature.
If your system has been disabled by ransomware, the malware was probably lurking in your system before it fired up and encrypted your data. You don’t want to restore your system from a backup that has the ransomware lurking inside it waiting to pounce again. So, to prevent this, find a clean system, run ShadowProtect SPX, and use the VirtualBoot feature to boot up a backed-up image.
Inside that image, run a malware-detection program to see if the ransomware payload is present. If the payload isn’t present in the backup, then you can safely restore your system from that image. If the payload is present, you can try to remove it from the virtual-booted system, then make a backup image of the cleaned system, and restore your actual hardware from that image.
If you can’t remove the payload, boot older backup images until you find one that’s clean, and restore your system from that. Again, you need to keep some drives available with backup images on them, but if you value your data, you’re already doing exactly that with whatever backup software you use now.
Does One Job Extremely Well
On paper, Acronis Cyber Protect may look like the better backup choice, because it’s more flexible. Indeed, it is an Editors’ Choice-winning app. But what matters most in a backup app is reliability. I’ve never had a single problem with ShadowProtect. With Acronis, that’s simply not the case. That said, Acronis performs many different tasks and it usually does them all extremely well. If you need it for a task ShadowProtect doesn’t perform, it’s an excellent choice. ShadowProtect SPX Desktop does just one job—image backups—and does it perfectly. It’s our top-scoring Editors’ Choice winner for backup apps.
