| Product: |
Backup Software in general |
| Date: |
11.06.01 (1019 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Peace of mind
Disadvantages: Not cheap
If only…
How many times have you said that?
If only I hadn’t sent that email without thinking more carefully about what I wanted to say.
If only I hadn’t installed that innocuous piece of software that’s now screwed up my machine.
If only I had backed up the data on my machine before it got stolen.
That last one happened to me. Actually, in my case I was relatively lucky. I had backed up the vital files to a server at work two weeks before but I still lost a lost of irreplaceable stuff. It made me think carefully about being more diligent in future.
But, how to back up? My hard drive is 7.6gig, (I use a Toshiba Tecra 8000 laptop). Too big really to backup in its entirety to CDs. Forget Zip drives! Maybe an external disk? There are many that plug into the PCMCIA slot but they do tend to be a bit pricey.
Ideally a tape drive would be best but a colleague who has a Ditto drive, which connects via the parallel printer port told me that, although it does the job, it’s desperately slow. He starts his backup in the evening and lets it run overnight. It takes around 10 hours and he has a smaller hard drive than me!
I eventually found via the Internet a company called Datawise, based in Wokingham, who had a device called a Safe-T Box. It uses a Travan drive that, on a TR-3 Extra tape would hold up to 4.4gig of data. A couple of those would backup the entire machine. Also, it connected via the PCMCIA slot with a dedicated cable. The backup should be quite fast.
I contacted Datawise to find out where I could buy one but was told that they no longer supplied this device. However, they still had some in stock and agreed to sell one direct. I paid £180 for it.
It came with backup software. This was what was known as Seagate Backup Exec.
The software is very good and I regularly backed up the machine with it. I took a full backup once
a week. The average time taken to back up about 4.5gig of data was about 1 ¾ hours. This occupied just over one tape. Each other day I did an incremental backup of just the changed files. This took about 25 minutes. The whole week’s worth of data fitted onto two tapes.
Recently I had a disaster but rather than restore the machine I decided to take to opportunity to upgrade from Windows95 OSR2 to Windows Me. However, the problem now was that I needed to upgrade my software, including Backup Exec.
I now discovered that Seagate no longer owned the rights to the software but had sold it to Veritas. I would have to buy the software all over again.
Now, I have been in no way dissatisfied with Backup Exec but a new copy would cost £95. That is for the Backup Exec Desktop Pro version. There are three versions varying from a very simply backup program at around £35 up to the Desktop Pro version. However, only the Desktop Pro version provides full disaster recovery capability. This is what was provided with the original tape drive.
Could I do with just the basic version? Dangerous. Only the Desktop Pro version provides the ability to recover from the backup tapes to a virgin hard drive, without even an operating system.
I did look around to see if any other software supplier provided an alternative but it seems that Veritas very much have the market to themselves. Perhaps that’s why they can get away with charging so much.
I did try installing the MS Backup that comes with Windows Me. That also appears to be a version of the original Seagate Backup Exec but, contrarily, it only seems to provide Disaster Recovery. There seems to be no way to use it to recover individual files. That clearly was no good.
Reluctantly I decided to buy Backup Exec Desktop Pro but I did at least find it for £75 (from Misco) so, a bit of a saving but not much.
I installed it or, at least, tried to.
It appeared to install but it wouldn’t run. Fortunately you get 30 days free telephone support from Veritas. I phoned and explained the problem, which may have been caused by the uninstall of MS Backup leaving conflicting files around. Anyway, they recommended a solution and it solved the problem even though their problem description didn’t entirely fit my circumstances.
I did my first backup with the new software and it worked just as well as the original version. I have since done a full backups and incremental ones and they take about the same length of time as before.
Backup Exec keeps a catalogue of what it has backed up and from this you select to restore individual files or whole drives. It tells you what media you have used for each copy. I use four tapes. I recycle them each fortnight. Backup Exec warns you that you are about to overwrite an active tape and gives you the option to continue or to use another tape.
I feel far more reassured now that once again I am protecting the data on my machine.
Veritas Backup Exec supports a very wide range of devices, not just tape but Zip dives and also backup to CD-ROM.
I can recommend it to anyone who is concerned about protecting their data. I rate it four stars only because I think it is over-priced, not because of the quality of the product.
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