BackupToZip is a simple backup program. It maintains a
compressed mirror of a set of files in a single large ZIP
file. You can then copy this ZIP file to DVD, flash drive,
hard disk or CD for backup. Unlike a compression utility,
such as WinZIP, if you delete files, the next time you run
BackupToZip it will automatically delete those deleted files
from the backup archive. It will also automatically update
changed or add new files as needed.

To restore, you would use a conventional ZIP tool such as
WinZIP to fetch replacements for the damaged files from the
archive.

BackupToZip is much faster than recreating the archive from
scratch each time with WinZIP. It also avoids the usual
problem of gradually accumulating more and more junk in your
backup archive files that have long been deleted from your actual
files. With an ordinary archiving utility, come time to
restore, you have to manually sort through the accumulated
chaff.

Advantages

The final DVD is a perfectly standard DVD. You do not need any special
utilty to browse it or copy files off it, other than an archiver such as
WinZip, or the archiver built into Windows. The DVD can also be read on
other operating systems without special software, so you can transfer you
data to a totally different computer. Nearly all other backup programs
use a propietary DVD format that only their software can read.

You can use the free BackupToZip with a simple free DVD burning program
such as Nero Lite. Most other backup programs, even ones that do no
compression, charge you. Using BackupToZip is completely free, other than
the cost of blank DVDs or CDs.

As a side effect, BackupToZip maintains a hot backup, a compressed mirror
of your data files on hard disk. You can recover almost instantly from
data loss using this this hot backup, much faster than fetching files from
DVD.