GUARD is a portable, fully accessible backup and data-protection utility for Windows. It backs up your chosen folders to any destination (a local drive, an external disk, or a network share), creates full bare-metal system images with Windows' built-in wbadmin, and keeps an inventory of your installed apps so they are easy to reinstall after a clean OS install - optionally with their settings.
The release ships as a self-contained portable folder with the .NET 10 runtime and Windows App SDK bundled in, so there is nothing to install. GUARD is built screen-reader-first, with native dark-mode theming, and keeps itself current with a built-in checksum-verified updater.
Features include additive and mirror copy modes (built on Robocopy), one-tick and custom exclusions, dated backup versions with pruning, a dry-run preview, scheduled and run-on-connect backups, scheduled or on-demand system images with a recovery-media wizard, and app-list export/reinstall through winget.
What's new in 0.5.5
GUARD v0.5.5 is a bug-squashing release. Testing the app's daily usage and thoroughly reading through the codebase turned up several faults: a few instances where GUARD would stay silent or unresponsive when something went wrong, the possibility that your files or settings could get stranded, and an unlikely, but possible, app crash. Fixed - Restoring app settings could move your settings folder aside and put nothing back, then report success. GUARD renames an existing settings folder aside before copying the saved copy over it. If the drive holding the saved copy was disconnected during the reinstall that runs first, the copy quietly did nothing, the folder stayed renamed, and the summary counted it as restored. GUARD now re-checks the saved copy just before each folder is restored; a restore that cannot read it leaves your folder exactly where it is, and the summary names the folders it left alone. - A . or \ destination subfolder was accepted, and a Mirror backup would then delete the rest of your backup. Both mean the destination itself, so a pair saved that way mirrored into the root and the next run purged every other folder's backup. Both are now refused when a folder is added or edited. Folders already saved that way keep working and are left alone. - Saving one page's settings could replace the other page's with defaults. If the settings file could not be read at that moment - held open by another program, or on a drive that had gone away - GUARD treated the failure as "no settings yet" and wrote defaults over the fields the page does not own. Starting GUARD while the file was unreadable could then overwrite it entirely. GUARD now tells the difference between "no settings yet" and "settings could not be read", refuses to save over what it could not read, and says so. - A backup that gave up before it started said nothing at all. An unreachable destination, or a scheduled backup already holding the run lock, ended the run before the first folder, so no outcome was announced and the progress line kept reading "Measuring folders...". Worse, a run skipped because another backup held the lock left the previous run's green "succeeded" on screen as the only signal. Every run now ends with a spoken outcome, and one skipped for the lock says so. - Stop Backup did nothing if pressed before the backup itself started. The button was live during the save and folder checks that precede the run, but a press in that window went nowhere. …
GUARD v0.5.4 is a data-safety release. A use-case audit turned up four ways GUARD could break a backup, or tell you it had protected something when it hadn't. Fixed - A Mirror-mode folder pair could delete the rest of your backup. Typing . as the destination subfolder - a reasonable way to ask for "put these files at the top of the backup drive" - sent that pair to the destination root, and the check that stops two pairs mirroring into the same place didn't recognize it as the root, so the save went through and the next run's mirror deleted every other folder's backup. GUARD now reads . as the root it is, and blocks the save the way it already blocks two pairs sharing a folder. - A backup whose source folders were all missing reported success. If the drive holding them didn't mount, or a network share was down, the run still finished green and an unattended run raised the "finished successfully" notification, so you could go weeks believing you were protected while nothing was being copied. A source that isn't there is now reported as an error. If you back up a drive that isn't always connected, runs made while it's absent will now report an error instead of success. - Updating while a scheduled backup was running could leave a broken install. GUARD waited for its own window to close, but not for a scheduled backup, which runs as a second GUARD process. The update could unpack over files still in use and leave the folder part old and part new, with GUARD never restarting. …
0.5.3Aug 1, 2026
GUARD v0.5.3 fixes various bugs to ensure GUARD keeps protecting the things you ask it to, and adds a way to clean up its data on-demand. Added - Settings gains Remove GUARD's Scheduled Tasks, which unregisters GUARD's schedules from Windows. Run it before deleting or uninstalling GUARD, so that tasks don't get left behind and keep firing at an app that's been removed. - GUARD now warns when a folder has nothing left to back up while your backup still holds files from it, and when the backup destination is empty but records show a backup has run (deleted backup or reformatted drive). Changed - Installed with winget, GUARD now keeps its settings, scripts and logs in %LOCALAPPDATA%\GUARD and updates through winget upgrade rather than updating itself: winget deletes its whole install folder on upgrade and uninstall, which would destroy anything kept there. Set your settings up once more after this update; they'll survive from now on. A folder you extracted yourself stays fully portable. Fixed - GUARD installed via winget install would previously not launch, and a scheduled backup task saved under that install would silently never run, because winget's portable packages launch through a symlink Windows reports as the app's real location. - The default backup folders (Documents, Desktop, etc.) were fixed paths, so if Windows moved one - OneDrive's "Back up your folders", or a folder's Location tab - GUARD backed up the empty folder left behind and still reported success. …
0.5.2Jul 22, 2026
Largely a bug-fix release: a broad pass over the app closed up crashes, races, and a few data-safety gaps that had crept in. Safer backups and app settings - A drive that isn't your real backup destination can no longer be adopted silently: if the last-used drive letter now points at a different, reachable volume (for example, the real drive was unplugged and something else took its letter), Save now warns and needs a second Save to confirm, instead of risking that drive's files being deleted as "extras" in Mirror mode. - Restoring app settings no longer risks losing the original folder: if putting the saved copy back failed right after the existing folder was renamed aside, GUARD now tries to move the original back first, and only reports it separately (with its location) if that also fails. - A backup that robocopy couldn't fully reconcile (a "Mismatch", such as the destination having a file where the source now has a same-named folder) is now counted and called out in the run summary instead of being reported as a clean "Backup complete". - Restoring app settings only accepts the three folder locations GUARD's own export writes (%APPDATA%, %LOCALAPPDATA%, %USERPROFILE%\.config), closing a gap where an imported manifest could target other folders for rename-aside-and-replace. …
Other versions
0.5.1
Frequently asked questions
Is GUARD free?
Yes. GUARD is free and open-source software released under the MIT license.
What is the latest version of GUARD?
The latest version is 0.5.5, released on Aug 14, 2026.
Is it safe to download GUARD?
The download button links to the official installer published on github.com, the same file Windows Package Manager installs. You can verify the downloaded file by comparing its SHA-256 checksum with 40f170d465598e03a1f8140af13ceecce37db0c0378d5457e47dd410df4ab3c8.
Which Windows versions does GUARD support?
GUARD requires Windows 10 version 1809 or later and is available for any architecture systems.
How do I uninstall GUARD?
Open Settings › Apps › Installed apps, find GUARD and select Uninstall. From the command line, run winget uninstall --id=PlanetLinux98.GUARD -e.
Is there a portable version of GUARD?
Yes. GUARD is available as a portable ZIP archive (GUARD.zip, any architecture) that runs without installation. Copy it to any folder or USB drive and run it from there.
Alternatives to GUARD
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