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Rating: 
Summary: Save Your Money!
Review: For over a year I have tried to get this software to work correctly. I would get constant error messages with every backup that was performed. NTI's support people (if you want to call them that!) would tell me to use another brand of media, make sure all other programs were closed, use mode 1, use mode 2, make sure the CD was formatted (even though there was only an option to do a full or quick erase), uninstall any other CR recording software...
I've installed it on three systems, with three different approved CD-RW drives. I've used only the best media and followed every other suggestion that was made to me by NTI support. I finally gave up, broke the disk into pieces and sent it back to NTI (yes, it made me feel better!). This is garbage software at its finest. When I first saw the interface was exactly like the old Colorado Backup I should have quit then!
Rating:
Summary: Software doesn't work
Review: I experienced a major problem this past weekend. I was trying to restore a hard drive from a backup made by NTI Backup Now! and it failed. I couldn't get my Dell Latitude to read the first CD. So I decided to create a separate partition on my desktop to test the backup software. Well catastrophe struck, and I corrupted the hard drive in my desktop. "Well, not to worry," I pulled out the 37 CD's which were the image of the hard drive made by NTI Backup. OH NO, that backup wouldn't work either.
Two different computers and two different backups, and both failed. NTI's technical support's response was basically, "Well sometimes the backup doesn't work. It must be something on your computer." When I told them that it was two different computers, their response was "too bad, nothing we can do." When I asked about a refund for the $200 I had spent on the software, I was told, "contact your retailer, our exchange-refund policy is for only 30 days."NTI Backup Now! is supposed to serve two functions; making incremental backups of data and making drive images. The drive image module doesn't seem to work, and there is no practical way to test your drive-image. Technical support suggested testing the image by trying a restore, but admitted that if the restore failed, you would corrupt your data. They suggested securing a second hard drive and trying the test restore on that drive. That is more than a little impractical when you have two different computers. Also, version 3.0 of their software does not provide for the creation of a boot floppy disk. I was told by technical support in December that this update would be coming soon, but it never arrived. Thank goodness I also had version 2.5, so I could make a boot disk, but it ended up being useless. Very Truly Yours, Jack Grossnickle
Rating:
Summary: DON'T update this!
Review: If you have the software on and its working, don't update it with the patches. It removes the software. Tech support was a pain and unhelpful. Don't bother.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible Product, Terrible Support
Review: MS backup IS better than this!
1) NTI changes the basic operation of the program from update to update. Good features in ver 3.0.18/3.0.29 disappeared in later versions.
2) Their idea of an emergency repair disc is to burn your entire C: to CD/DVDs. What they need to create is a bootable disc that can get you to the network to perform the full restore. DriveImage 7 & Retrospect 6.5 do an excellent job of disaster recovery.
3) They will NOT respond to technical support requests with pointed questions. Bug reports are completely ignored.
4) They see NO VALUE in release notes. "Install updates at your own risk" is the company policy.
5) Scheduled backups only occur, if you have logged in to the PC (with admin rights, of course).
6) There is NO way to edit the schedule of a backup (change the time). You have to remove it & add it back.
7) No community support or forums... if no one else is using it, neither should you.
The list continues.
Rating: 
Summary: Mainstream Users get Solid Product at Good Price
Review: NTI BackupNow! Deluxe 3.0 is really three products in one, which gives you a better value for your $$. The three products are a file-level backup utility, an unattended backup scheduler, and a drive image backup utility (and restorer). All three of the things that a solid backup product needs to help you keep your data safe. Both the file-level and Drive Image backup have two level of file compression that on average gets you about 1Gbyte of files crammed onto a 650MB CD disc. Similar compression ratio for data going to DVD. The file-level utility is definitely the strongest portion of the product. Like many other products, it provides a Windows Explorer like interface. It allows file trees to be dragged into a backup list (view). Facilities for file inclusions and file exclusions (and directories) are available. The 3.0 version of the product has an excellent array of supported CD-R/CD-RW drives AND ADDS NEW support in 3.0 for DVD-R/DVD-RW and DVD+R/DVD+RW drives. The built in support is excellent, and updated drive support modules are available for free at the NTI web site:... The backup scheduler and unattended backup is also reasonably strong. Added in 3.0 is a CD/DVD drive spanning feature. This means that if you have multiple recordable/rewriteable drives you can use some or all of them in a backup. That's great for unattended backup, if for instance your backups tend to require more than one CD (or DVD) disc. The product also works well with a single drive if you data fits on one disc (for unattended). For interactive use, it will prompt for a new disc when the last disc is filled, so it works just like you'd expect. Another nice feature is that you can backup to disk files, including network disks (for instance on a mounted server). You can also backup FROM network disks. The FROM feature works only with File-level backup. If a disk file is used as the backup-file instead of CD, it can be used in either file level or DriveImage backup. The DriveImage backup portion of the product is the weakest. Its improved in 3.0, but still lacking. The drawbacks are that if you use SCSI drives- then you need a Windows98 "startup" floppy disk in order to create Emergency recovery floppy or CD for the Drive Image "restore" operation. If you use IDE (as most home users do) then the Windows98 floppy is NOT needed in 3.0. (In 2.x the Win98 floppy was needed for everything). On the plus side, if you do need the Win98 floppy, NTI's product only asks for it ONE TIME. It stores a copy on the hard drive for all future backups (that's something). Another much larger drawback is that with Windows2K w/SP2 or SP3 installed (or with Windows XP)you must FDISK and FORMAT the restore volume to EXACTLY the same size as the original volume was. (This means that you need to shutdown, use the restore floppy or CD, boot to it, run FDISK, display the existing partition, and WRITE DOWN the partition particulars for the advent of a later emergency where recovery is needed.) The product supports FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS. But for restoring an NTFS volume you need to format the volume as FAT16 or FAT32 from the recovery floppy/CD/DVD, and then the restore utility will over-write it with NTFS. That works fine, but its confusing. Given the limitations of the drive image portion of the product, I'd have to recommend an alternative such as Norton Ghost or PowerQuest DriveImage, or VCOM's DriveWorks if Drive Image backup is the reason that you are looking at BackupNow! 3.0. Given that the drive image works fine (it just has some usage wrinkles, the Win98 floppy requirement for SCSI) and the partition size restoration restrictions) and its included FREE, it could save you some money ($$) if you are really looking for the excellent file-level backup and backup scheduling automation features (+ disk backup file, network backup file). When you get drive image backup for free in BackupNow! 3.0 that's a solid deal that no one can argue with. And this product supports the new DVD+R/DVD+RW/DVD-R/DVD-RW drives. So its ahead of the game on drive support. This is a backup product, not a "burner" product, such as Nero, Roxio EasyCDCreator, or NTI's own CD-Maker. For the money its a great buy, but because of the drive image issues, it gets only four of five stars in my book.
Rating:
Summary: Mainstream Users get Solid Product at Good Price
Review: NTI BackupNow! Deluxe 3.0 is really three products in one, which gives you a better value for your $$. The three products are a file-level backup utility, an unattended backup scheduler, and a drive image backup utility (and restorer). All three of the things that a solid backup product needs to help you keep your data safe. Both the file-level and Drive Image backup have two level of file compression that on average gets you about 1Gbyte of files crammed onto a 650MB CD disc. Similar compression ratio for data going to DVD. The file-level utility is definitely the strongest portion of the product. Like many other products, it provides a Windows Explorer like interface. It allows file trees to be dragged into a backup list (view). Facilities for file inclusions and file exclusions (and directories) are available. The 3.0 version of the product has an excellent array of supported CD-R/CD-RW drives AND ADDS NEW support in 3.0 for DVD-R/DVD-RW and DVD+R/DVD+RW drives. The built in support is excellent, and updated drive support modules are available for free at the NTI web site:... The backup scheduler and unattended backup is also reasonably strong. Added in 3.0 is a CD/DVD drive spanning feature. This means that if you have multiple recordable/rewriteable drives you can use some or all of them in a backup. That's great for unattended backup, if for instance your backups tend to require more than one CD (or DVD) disc. The product also works well with a single drive if you data fits on one disc (for unattended). For interactive use, it will prompt for a new disc when the last disc is filled, so it works just like you'd expect. Another nice feature is that you can backup to disk files, including network disks (for instance on a mounted server). You can also backup FROM network disks. The FROM feature works only with File-level backup. If a disk file is used as the backup-file instead of CD, it can be used in either file level or DriveImage backup. The DriveImage backup portion of the product is the weakest. Its improved in 3.0, but still lacking. The drawbacks are that if you use SCSI drives- then you need a Windows98 "startup" floppy disk in order to create Emergency recovery floppy or CD for the Drive Image "restore" operation. If you use IDE (as most home users do) then the Windows98 floppy is NOT needed in 3.0. (In 2.x the Win98 floppy was needed for everything). On the plus side, if you do need the Win98 floppy, NTI's product only asks for it ONE TIME. It stores a copy on the hard drive for all future backups (that's something). Another much larger drawback is that with Windows2K w/SP2 or SP3 installed (or with Windows XP)you must FDISK and FORMAT the restore volume to EXACTLY the same size as the original volume was. (This means that you need to shutdown, use the restore floppy or CD, boot to it, run FDISK, display the existing partition, and WRITE DOWN the partition particulars for the advent of a later emergency where recovery is needed.) The product supports FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS. But for restoring an NTFS volume you need to format the volume as FAT16 or FAT32 from the recovery floppy/CD/DVD, and then the restore utility will over-write it with NTFS. That works fine, but its confusing. Given the limitations of the drive image portion of the product, I'd have to recommend an alternative such as Norton Ghost or PowerQuest DriveImage, or VCOM's DriveWorks if Drive Image backup is the reason that you are looking at BackupNow! 3.0. Given that the drive image works fine (it just has some usage wrinkles, the Win98 floppy requirement for SCSI) and the partition size restoration restrictions) and its included FREE, it could save you some money ($$) if you are really looking for the excellent file-level backup and backup scheduling automation features (+ disk backup file, network backup file). When you get drive image backup for free in BackupNow! 3.0 that's a solid deal that no one can argue with. And this product supports the new DVD+R/DVD+RW/DVD-R/DVD-RW drives. So its ahead of the game on drive support. This is a backup product, not a "burner" product, such as Nero, Roxio EasyCDCreator, or NTI's own CD-Maker. For the money its a great buy, but because of the drive image issues, it gets only four of five stars in my book.
Rating:
Summary: Buyer beware
Review: This product wouldn't work until I upgraded every driver and downloaded the latest upgrades from the manufacturer on a less than one year computer running Windowss 2000 PRO. Even then it never finished backing up without failing. After I removed it, my system would lock up on start-up 2 times out of 3. There is no telephone tech support, only fax and e-mail. An absolute waste of money.
Rating:
Summary: Buyer beware
Review: This product wouldn't work until I upgraded every driver and downloaded the latest upgrades from the manufacturer on a less than one year computer running Windowss 2000 PRO. Even then it never finished backing up without failing. After I removed it, my system would lock up on start-up 2 times out of 3. There is no telephone tech support, only fax and e-mail. An absolute waste of money.
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