Anywhere Backup is bundled with the Western Digital My Book Home Edition. A wizard helps to configure your backup settings, and you can back up not only to a My Book device but to a network location, a USB drive or an iPod. The software supports versioning and lets you choose between automatic selection of files and backup locations and or creating a customized backup set. The software also supports built-in encryption, though this feature isn’t explained in detail by the included documentation.

TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt is a popular tool that allows encrypting files into a secured container and mapping an encrypted container into your Windows environment as a new drive. This allows working with files inside an encrypted container as if they were on a local drive. You can create regular or hidden TrueCrypt volumes on a partition of your choice, select the encryption algorithm and limit the volume size for the encrypted container. This can’t be done if you create a file on an existing partition.

Memeo AutoSync

Memeo AutoSync is a powerful tool to keep your system and backup files in sync. However, this should never be used instead of regular backups—it’s an option to provide an exact copy of your files. This copy may be newer than the last backup, but it won’t help if you need to restore to an older revision of an important document. Unfortunately, My Book Home Edition comes with just a 30-day trial version of AutoSync.