We Need Better Backup Software

Dantz Retrospect Express comes packaged with a lot of external hard drives and seems to do a decent job of meeting each of your points (except for the last one).

I need DVD-write capability, with an append function for incremental backups. Currently testing CyberLink's PowerBackup, which seems promising (it's a version of NTI's Backup prog in appearance).

I'm with you on this, Harry. I've tried Dantz Retrospect Express (problem: size of backup files is limited to something like 2GB), Acronis True Image 8 (problem: not only has problems imaging to external drives, but won't even image internally to an identical HD), and now finally Casper Ghost XP 3.0.

Casper does its job, but is only useful for people with two internal hard drives, and it doesn't offer bells and whistles like compression or versioning (it writes whole drive to whole drive, including empty space). So, it's good for my setup (2 identical internal drives, one just for backup), but only for the purpose of keeping a fully functioning copy of your main drive. I do the backup daily to allow me to deal immediately with a catastrophic failure of my main drive.

Unfortunately, this doesn't help much for user error like accidental document deletion unless I realize it quickly. Moreover, I can't go back to earlier versions of the document. This means that I'll have to get an external drive and use something like BounceBack's software to do versioned backups of My Documents.

And to the peanut gallery- please don't tell me that Acronis works, or that I should try Norton Ghost. Acronis doesn't work on my computer and many others (just take a look at the thread in Wilders Security Forum), and Ghost uses the exact same technology.

Oh, and in your second to last section, it should be "affecting" and not "effecting". Affect is a verb, effect is a noun. I affect you, you affect me, I am affected by you, what is happening to me is an effect.

Woops- I'm with you, Lincoln (not Harry).

They will get around to making a program like that right after finding the "Holy Grail" of a Windows operating system without major flaws!

What I'd really like to see is a backup program intelligent enough to ferret out an application's settings in the infamous registry and save them along with the app when you do a backup. This would save hours of drudgery and endless restarts when a drive has to be completely restored.

Of course Microsoft will never allow such a program on the market, since the registry serves a DRM (Digital Rights Management) function for software. But, dammit, backups are supposed to save time and sanity. The way it is now, they do neither.

Re. backing up app's particular registry settings, good luck. The registry is the achilles heel of the O.S., and the single greatest f@ck-up since it's exception as ".ini" files with Win3. The registry is *not* a relational structure, in that all settings are meaningfully connected to an app, or vice-versa; it is a flat-file fiasco. It is impossible for backup software (or any other, for that matter) to "know" what keys are associated with what program(s), unless those keys are "manually" specified (and updated) to the backup software. (Again, good luck with that.) To eliminate "hours of drudgery and endless restarts when a drive has to be completely restored," you pretty much have to image the drive.

I don't use backup software at all. I segment my/our data into <6Gb sets and either burn onto DVD, or ZIP and then burn. This plus imaging works. I have a fancy DDS3 20/40GB DAT, but optical media is a lot cheaper, and facilitates relatively quick/easy access/restore.

No delta backups, complete optical backup set every month, with simply disk-to-disk copy rotating every day in between. I don't need software to do this job for me, doesn't take much of my time, and I'm too paranoid about the process (and implications of restore-time crisis) to trust a fully-automatic system.

There was a network-based HP system called Surestore Autobackup that worked wonderfully up to and including W2K. Disaster recovery assured, but no BounceBack type of activity. However, HP discontinued the product and it does not support XP. But for 'local' backup you are right, it does not exist (I tried all the products mentioned here) and have not found a good solution yet. Problem is, I would like to set something up at home with NAS unit, but have not found one yet (good backup software, that is).

Data Deposit Box offers an easy-to-use, real time, low-cost online backup and storage solution for home and small-business users. When a customer signs up, Data Deposit Box will automatically select some popular folders including: Windows Desktop; Windows Favorites; My Documents; Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express. If you have other folders you would like to back up, you can easily add them to the list by selecting them in the backup client.

Once installed, whenever you're online, Data Deposit Box backs up your data automatically. There are no procedures to follow; no schedules to set and you can never miss a backup window! Throughout the day Data Deposit Box watches your files, looking for changes. When a change is detected, our backup engine extracts the changes, compresses them, encrypts them, and securely transfers them to our secure data center. Once at the data center, your data is stored in this encrypted form. We use the strongest encryption available to ensure that your confidential data is kept safe and secure.

Backup software needs to deal with three distinct recovery scenarios.

First, what if your hard drive crashes, and you need to restore ALL system, program, and data files onto the new hard drive?

Second, what if your entire computer is lost (i.e. due to theft or fire), and you need to install ONLY your programs and data on a NEW machine containing a virgin operating system and registry file already installed thereon? Obviously, you can't just restore a backup from a 3 year-old desktop running XP Pro to a brand new laptop.

Third, what if you discover that one or more files of any kind has been corrupted for quite some time ... and you have to rapidly search multiple past backups for the last uncorrupted copy of that file or files?

Nothing I've seen on the market starts with these scenarios as a premise to their design or operation.

Further, the software must provide an integrated file splitting and encryption capability ... so that the resulting backup CD's and/or DVD's can conveniently and securely stored offsite.

Don't use Ghost, because in the event you need to re-activate ever more than 5 times you are doomed; customer service did not help me.

I wholeheartedly agree with Michael W. Szkaradek's post. I have exactly the same concerns. In addition, I'd like to be able to simulate a restore to be confident that it will work when I need it. This would go through all the motions of a restore without actually writing any data to the system drive.