Genie Timeline Home is backup software that offers PC tinkerers more bells and whistles than they can get in Windows 10's similar, built-in File History feature. Such niceties include things like automatic purging to save disk space, File Explorer integration for easily adding to the backup, and a protection-level indicator. The software worked well in my testing, and it's simpler to configure than some competitors' offerings, but it lacks important features found in products such as Acronis True Image 2016, our Editors' Choice for local backup software.

Starting Up
You can try Genie Timeline Home on for size with the free trial version, which doesn't make you respond to an email to get the download link as Paragon Backup & Recovery, does, and no credit card is required. Just download and run the installer and click Evaluate and you're good for 30 days. If you decide it's worth plunking down cold hard cash, the damage is a reasonable $39.95 (PayPal is conveniently accepted), a bit less than Acronis True Image 2016's $49.99, but definitely more than Windows' freely included File History feature. The Genie software runs on Windows XP through Windows 10, according to the button you press to download it, but only up to Windows 8 according to the spec page (which is surely an oversight).

Interface and Configuring Your First Backup
When you install Timeline, the software creates a virtual disk entry named Timeline Explore in File Explorer. It also adds right-click options to your Windows File Explorer entries that let you add the selected file to your backup and open a timeline viewer showing you versions and deleted files for the selected file. This makes getting to an individual file's previous version easier than Windows' File History feature does. With Windows, you have to choose a date for the whole backup set and then drill down to the file's folder.

With Genie, you start out with one of the simplest interfaces around, a three-step job that's very touch-friendly. The first order of business is to select a drive—the drive to which the backup will be saved, rather than the source of the data. Next, you see a four-by-three grid of tiles with options for what you want backed up. These include the basics like email, photos, documents, videos, desktop, music, and so on. Each tile has a check mark to indicate its inclusion in the backup.

A couple of the choices are less straightforward: Disaster Recovery and iPhone/iPad/iPod. The former lets you create a rescue disk, and the latter backs up your Apple mobile files if you've synced it to iTunes on the PC. If you'd rather have more control than the tiles provide, you can switch to the My Computer tab, where you can select any folders and files you want from a tree.

The next choice involves compression: You can either back up the data uncompressed or have Timeline store it as ZIP archives to save space on the target storage. One thing you won't see an option for is encryption of the backup, which Acronis True Image 2016 and NTI Backup Now 6 offer. Genie only offers this capability in its business version.

Next it's time to run your first backup. The program dialog changes to an informative display of backup progress and options. The Backup Score is one of those perks I mentioned that the software grants you that Windows' included backup utility doesn't. My score was 2/4; one demerit was that my first backup hadn't been completed yet, and the other was that no cloud backup was set up. The last point is to push you to Zoolz, Genie's cloud storage service, which offers 1TB for a reasonable $79.99 per year.

The window also lets you pause the backup, and there's a big Restore button that will doubtless be welcome in times of file emergencies. Another nice accessory is the Summary window, with three tabs for search, statistics and file-type breakdowns, and backup history. You can also switch between Smart and Turbo backup modes, with the latter obviously running faster and demanding more system resources. One thing the window doesn't tell you is how long the backup job is estimated to take.

More interesting settings are at your disposal, as well: You can configure File Retention settings (either limiting versions by date or by data size) or enable Auto Purge, which removes older versions of files. Two performance options are also configurable on the Customize Backup tab: Game/Movie mode ensures that backups won't interfere with those activities, and Power Saving Mode lowers the program's resource usage while a laptop is running on battery power.

When it comes to scheduling, Genie Timeline lets you choose intervals from 30 minutes to 1 day, but its IntelliCDP option optimizes the scheduling automatically based on file type and size to achieve a balance between protection and system performance. Though the CDP stands for Continuous Data Protection, in the Home version, files are only checked for changes and backed up every 30 minutes, whereas the business version does so every 3 minutes.

Email notifications are available in the form of weekly or daily status reports and error alerts. You'll need to set up a Genie account and password for this—you can't just enter an email address for receiving the notifications.

Performance
For file-and-folder backup speed I tested with two 100MB sets of mixed files and folders, which I backed up from and HP Elitebook 8640p to a Western Digital My Passport Essential external hard drive. Genie Timeline came in with a respectable 37 seconds, but NTI Backup Now 6's 21 seconds and Acronis's 35.5 seconds bested it, but Genie was far better than Paragon Backup & Restore, with its dismal time of 2 minutes and 33 seconds.

Restoring
The big Restore button on Genie's main interface offers three sub-choices: Restore from Timeline, Advanced Restore, and Disaster Recovery. The first option simply opens a File Explorer windows to Timeline's virtual drive. You have to navigate the directory tree to get to the file you want. Right-clicking on the file offers the options Restore to Original Location, Restore to Alternate Location, and Show Versions. I was successfully able to restore multiple versions of a Word document I edited multiple times.

The Advanced option shows a timeline of backups, and includes a search box. With the simple method, you can see Windows File Explorer's search box, but it only searches the current folder; the Advanced view's search turns up every file in the entire backup that has the text you entered in its name. Windows' built-in File History feature also lets you search in the entire backup set.

The Disaster Recovery feature is a bit touchier, and you may be better off with Acronis True Image on this score. When I downloaded the necessary component, my browser told me that its digital signature was invalid or corrupt, and Windows' SmartScreen popped up a warning message when I tried to run its installer. I'd had a bad experience with a previous Genie disaster recovery disc creator in the past, so I installed that with trepidation, as well. Happily, the newer tool created a bootable USB thumb drive without issues, and very quickly. Note that if you're running a PC with UEFI secure boot, you'll need to take some steps to enable booting from an external USB.

Mobile Apps
Unlike Paragon Backup & Recovery, Genie offers mobile apps for iPhone and iPad that let you keep tabs on your backup. But these apps are pretty lightweight: They just show info about your backup status, but don't let you do anything remotely, such as initiate or modify a backup. If you use an online backup service such as SOS Online Backup, you get those options, as well as the ability to download (and sometimes even play media) files to your mobile device. Even if you sign up for Genie's cloud storage, it doesn't offer those functions.

A Magic Backup?
My testing shows that Genie Timeline Home is both user friendly and effective. It gives you all the tools you need to protect and save files and versions, and even to get a downed PC up and running again. True, you could just use Windows' included File History feature, but Genie wraps the functionality in a more accessible interface and adds some niceties, such as File Explorer integration and backup reports. It's a perfectly acceptable option, but Acronis True Image 2016 offers more capabilities.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.