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| Program Title - Backup Plus Software type - Shareware Publisher - Avantrix Download - Backup Plus site then follow download links Cost - $39.95 Function - Hard drive backup and selective restore Version (reviewed) - 6.0.4 Scores - utility  -
ease of use -
manuals/help |
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My Review (I am not a reviewer - Its just one personal view)
This is a backup program with 3 levels of compression. It does everything I need, but not everything I would like. Although Backup Plus has a facility to write CDs, I don't use it. I prefer the speed and reliability of backing one hard drive on to another, automatically, without either the need to be there, swapping discs, nor the possibility of faulty recordings screwing up a long session. I have an old fashioned child, parent and grandparent scheme to a separate hard-drive (D:) and two copies on CD-RWs, so about a months worth and between the two, I am confident of everything at 7-14 days ago, and very likely to be covered for 0-6 days ago. Having had a hard-drive crunch ..at a time when I was programming and only did monthly backups, I think it is time well spent. I backup 12GB of system and variable data and program folders. Which fits on 7 CDs. and here is where it could improve. Currently it will only split output files during a CD write session, so I have to write a long file, and split it with HJSplit, into CD recordable lengths. and because a single file on FAT 32 has a 2.1GB limit, the backup has to be done in sections. Despite XP being NTFS capable, I can't change to it as my XP is an upgrade from Win98 which itself is NOT NTFS capable. Well to cut short, an option for 'x'MB output file splits would be very useful. Otherwise, It seems pretty faultless software, and I have no problems recommending it highly. Having said that, there are some system files in XP you must put on the ignore list, otherwise it crunches. They might be fixed in current releases, but my version is showing it's age. If you get a new one, let me know! Anyway my Ghost Recovery set copies them all.. so its not a problem. For an idea of speed, when I had a P2/500 and 128MB/100 RAM I would reckon to back 1 GB per hour quite comfortably (it varies depending on what you're doing) Now I use an Athlon XP1700 with 512MB/PC2100 RAM and 150 minutes is easily enough time for 12MB (about five times as fast). Oh don't do anything that alters files it is currently working on. Leave it well alone during Windows system backup. |
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Updated: 26 October 2002 . . . Checked: 10 June 2002 |