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19/08/2004 |
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Backup My PC The key to disaster prevention - Backup My PC. Review by Kai Chandler
The need for a backup strategy In a recent Computing’ Guide, we looked at the value of your data and the importance of creating a backup strategy. While many readers will be content to copy their data files to a removable storage medium such as CD-RW or tape, perhaps with use of Winzip to compress the data before copying, others will use the Windows Backup function.
Regardless of how good a backup tool may be, it’s useless if it fails to support your backup device. This is where other vendors such as Dantz have fallen down, at least as far as my fairly average set of hardware is concerned. Backup My PC works with a vast range of backup devices including Hewlett-Packard, Exabyte and Plasmon. In tests I found it be pretty bullet-proof. After much frustration in finding backup software that recognised my Hewlett-Packard Travan internal tape drive and WPI CD-RW drives, it was a dream to load Backup My PC and find that it worked first time. Backup My PC also runs on just about every version of Windows apart from NT3.51. In an multi-OS environment this gives the reassurance that you have a common user interface and more importantly a common backup file standard so you can backup and restore between operating systems. Easy to use Backup My PC is easy to install, finding and identifying any backup devices automatically.
You can schedule backups to allow them to run unattended while the machine is not in use. Backup My PC will do a full backup after every ten incremental backups to ease restores. A simple graphical display charts progress during the backup. Backup My PC also has options to backup the registry or, in the case of Windows 2000, the System State. A separate Disaster Recovery function allows you to create full backups of your entire system but this is not yet implemented for XP. File Finder The file finder feature is particularly neat – search for a file by name and Backup My PC will tell you which backup file contains it. That should save a good deal of time when trying to restore a saved file. You can also view lists of prior backups or interrogate the media to see what backups they contain. To sum up
Backup My PC provides the essential backup and restore functions in an elegant and simple to use package with the choice of Wizards or access to underlying functions. The wide range of supported peripherals and operating systems, compression and unattended operation makes it worth a close look. It is quite expensive for home users but you can download a 30 day evaluation copy from here to see if it’s right for you. Backup My PC requires Windows 95 OSR2, 98SE, ME, NT4, 2000 or XP. |
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Windows
Backup, based on software from Seagate, isn’t ideal as it supports
only a limited range of backup devices. If it works for you that’s
fine, otherwise, the inelegantly named Backup My PC is well worth a
look. It’s marketed in this country by Ireland based Orlogix
Software but is based on the well-known Veritas backup software. It
rose to fame when Hewlett Packard recently stopped supporting
Colorado Backup and recommended Backup My PC instead. 
Supported
devices 
Once installed, Wizards available from the Tools menu
help you with backup and restore tasks. For example, the Backup
Wizard first asks if you want to do a full backup or just backup
selected files. Once the files have been selected, you then choose
between a full backup or an incremental backup which is limited to
new and changed files. It suggests you compare files with the
original and compress during backup to save space. Incidentally, if
your backup device incorporates hardware compression then Backup My
PC will use that rather than software compression which tends to be
slower. In tests, a compression of over 2.1:1 was achieved. 