Veeam Agent FREE — The Complete Guide: Image Backup and Bare-Metal Restore for Windows
Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows FREE is the free edition of Veeam’s backup agent. It backs up a whole PC as an image, or selected volumes, files and folders, to an external disk, a network share or a Veeam Backup and Replication repository.
Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows FREE
Veeam Software
Image backup of a whole Windows PC, single volumes or folders, with bootable recovery media and bare-metal restore.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Image backup — the whole PC, including the operating system and installed design software.
- File-level backup — only selected volumes or folders.
- Recovery media — a USB stick or ISO to boot a PC that no longer starts.
- Bare-metal restore — put the whole machine back onto a new disk.
- Single-file recovery — pull one file out of an image without restoring everything.
What is free and what is limited
The FREE edition needs no licence key and has no time limit, but it is a limited edition, not the full product: one backup job only, to a local drive, a network folder or a Veeam repository. Direct backup to cloud storage, long-term GFS retention and further features are reserved for the paid Workstation and Server editions, and downloading requires registration with an email address. For a single workstation this is usually enough.
Related tools
For disk imaging from USB with a simple interface — Rescuezilla. For image backup for home use — Paragon Backup & Recovery CE. For central backup of several PCs — UrBackup.
Rescuezilla
Rescuezilla project
Disk backup, restore and cloning in a simple graphical interface from a USB stick, compatible with Clonezilla images.
Get it from the vendorParagon Backup & Recovery Community Edition
Paragon Software
Image backup of disks, the operating system and folders on Windows, with scheduling, retention rules and recovery media, for non-commercial use.
Get it from the vendor
UrBackup
UrBackup project (Martin Raiber)
Client-server backup for an office network: file and disk-image backups of every PC to one server while they keep running.
Get it from the vendorClonezilla
NCHC Free Software Labs
Disk and partition imaging and cloning from boot media, including deployment to dozens of machines at once over a network.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
On an engineering workstation where a reinstall takes a full day, one image-backup job to an external disk is cheap, effective insurance — and Veeam FREE does it well.