Rating: Summary: Poorly Designed and Poor Technical Support Review: After backing up 16 DVDs and nearing the end I accidentally hit the eject button on the wrong drive. The program didn't ask me if that's what I meant to do--it simply ended! All tech support would say is they'd pass it to their programmers to consider in the future. Very shoddy design in my opinion. I tried to rebuild the catalog so I didn't have to redo hours of backup and after asking me to insert all 15 disks, it couldn't read the 16th--the one it shut down earlier, and so quit again. Tech support didn't even respond. I cannot get it to rename a DVD without reformatting and it insists on defaulting to its own naming system (though you can override it). Should have saved me time...instead cost me a LOT of time. I cannot recommend this program.
Rating: Summary: Wish I could Stomp on this Software with my foot! Review: After my hard drive failed I really wanted to get good back up software. I read the reviews in magazines and online and they all said this was the best. Well, it isn't. Far from it. I have installed it and re-installed it about 5 times, called tech support and e-mailed them many times. Followed all their advice and changed all my configurations, hardware drivers, uninstalled other apps, tried different brands of CD-R and CD-RW etc. etc. Never could get it to work at all. I have a great coaster collection. I am very frustrated, but worst of all, I still don't have back up software! I have a Dell 4000 notebook with Windows XP, plenty of RAM and my CD-RW is "supported" by the software, but it just won't work. A waste of money AND time!! Wish I could get my money back. My time is lost forever.
Rating: Summary: Just another dissapointment Review: Another that claims it can do the job, i.e. backup all your files to any media. First, it still reguires a floppy to make the "disaster recovery" set that they claim will recover a computer from disaster. Here in 2004, many, if not most computers, have moved away from that antique drive. Second, they claim that you have a choice of drives, and of using compressed or uncompressed backup files. So I finally found a work around to back up to my spare external drive, but when I try for uncompressed backups, the backup file ("complete") for my computer is only 428 MB, whilst the main hard drive shows that 68GB are in use? Third, proprietary files-Why cannot the backup file be in the same format that the rest of my computer uses? I am (...) enough, that I would like to be able to read, and verify that the files are actually what they purport to be, before trusting that this software that does not seem to accomplish any of the OTHER tasks it claims, has actually backed up my pc. Then there is the contact page. Why do I need to provide them with my life story to ask a simple question,and why do they need to attempt to "check for updates" every single time I boot up? That's more like spyware, I think. In short, I WANT MY MONEY BACK!
Rating: Summary: Big problems with WinXP SP1 and with some DVD drives Review: Back Up My PC (BUMP) is the latest generation of a tool formerly known as Veritas Backup Exec or Backup Exec Desktop. The primary value (to me) of that entire line of tools is their ability to backup the ENTIRE C drive, and restore it onto a new hard drive after replacing a failed hard drive, without having to reinstall windows and all the applications. You just boot the system from the special restore floppies, and start the restore, and when it's done, your system is just the way it was when you backed it up. I used Backup Exec on a Win98SE box with a DAT tape drive for years, and TWICE succesfully restored my system after HD failures. (That was SO AWESOME!) So, when I got my new WinXP box with a DVD+RW drive, I naturally wanted to continue to backup my system with software that could reliably restore it. BUMP's UI seems identical to the old Backup Exec, so I was hopeful it would be as good. So I bought a copy of BUMP and tried it. WHAT A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT. The first time I ran BUMP, it told me that BUMP cannot backup and restore the version of WinXP SP1 that I have. (How many versions of WinXP SP1 are there?) BUMP clearly is NOT going to be my PC backup solution due to this problem. Bump did offer to backup my data files onto my DVD, and so I tried that. When it got ready to start writing to the DBD, it spat out the brand new DVD+RW disk, saying it was media incompatible with my DVD drive. Of course, other DVD software has had no trouble writing on tht same media on my drive. Apparently my DVD drive is not one supported by BUMP. A friend who also uses BUMP used it on his PC to "format" my DVD+RW media, and then BUMP was able to write to it in my PC without compatibility complaints. So, I conclude that BUMP is not compatible with WinXP SP1 nor with my EMPREX DVD+RW drive. I'm still looking for a good PC WinXP SP1 backup solution.
Rating: Summary: The Devil is in the details Review: Backup MyPC comes with a fairly good manual and a colorful CD label. Now for the details. Backup MyPC does not support unattended, scheduled or automatic backups to anything with a capacity that exceeds a recordable DVD. I do not have a tape drive and therefore was not able to evaluate how it performed with that device. When backing up one hard drive to another on my PC, Backup MyPC divides the backup into a maximum of DVD size segments requiring the operator to click OK to initiate the next backup segment. My 80 GB drive required sixteen incremental clicks in order to complete a single backup. Furthermore, Backup MyPC includes menu picks for my CD-RW drive, my compact flash interface and a file, it does not include a menu pick for backing up to an internal or removable IDE hard drive. A major omission. A second weak area is recovery in the Windows XP environment. Backup MyPC does not come with a bootable CD suitable for disaster recovery. Should the operating system volume become unserviceable, the user must re-install Windows XP and Backup MyPC before restoring can be attempted. A major inconvenience. The reviews of this product appear to have been conducted to determine how well the included features performed, but did not address important missing features needed for any general purpose backup software package. If you can work within this program's limitations, you will probably be very happy. As for me, I am going to go with another backup program as soon as I can order it.
Rating: Summary: buggy software & lousy customer support Review: BackupMyPC was unable to backup my 100 GB hard disk to a network drive. StompSoft customer's support said the problem was due to my machine even though I was able to use a competitors product to backup my system. I've deleted BackupMyPC from my system and will no longer do any business with StompSoft.
Freebie backup utilities can do a task that BackupMyPC cannot.
Rating: Summary: Big problems with WinXP SP1 and with some DVD drives Review: First let me say two things to those who are complaining that it doesn't work with their CD burners: o You should have checked the compatibilty list o You should have downloaded the FREE 30-day trial Some pros for it: o It allows you to backup over networked drives (very cool) o It allows you to password protect your backups (cool again) A few cons: o I don't love the interface, don't hate it, but don't love it o The compression isn't "great", I also get about 1.3:1 Overall, I would have rated it 4-stars, but since I saw a few morons giving it 1-star for no good reasons, I wanted to defend it's honor a little. I'm still using the 30-day trial, so far so good. I recommend you try it out first before you buy. Also, BackupMyPC was associated with Veritas, which is a VERY good backup system for large servers and such, and the quaility is still with BackupMyPC. My opinion.
Rating: Summary: Good piece of backup software Review: First let me say two things to those who are complaining that it doesn't work with their CD burners: o You should have checked the compatibilty list o You should have downloaded the FREE 30-day trial Some pros for it: o It allows you to backup over networked drives (very cool) o It allows you to password protect your backups (cool again) A few cons: o I don't love the interface, don't hate it, but don't love it o The compression isn't "great", I also get about 1.3:1 Overall, I would have rated it 4-stars, but since I saw a few morons giving it 1-star for no good reasons, I wanted to defend it's honor a little. I'm still using the 30-day trial, so far so good. I recommend you try it out first before you buy. Also, BackupMyPC was associated with Veritas, which is a VERY good backup system for large servers and such, and the quaility is still with BackupMyPC. My opinion.
Rating: Summary: Buyer Beware Review: I bought this program for a simple Disaster Recovery. I tried the 30 day trial, but they require an original Windows 98 Disk. My Windows 98 came OEM or factory installed and I had no disk. Stomp's tech support told me all I needed was a disk. So, later I spent [money] on a Windows Disk and [money] for BackupMyPC, only to find that the disk did not help. BEWARE: If you have OEM or factory installed Windows it may move some files around. BackupMyPC will not function in this case for disaster recovery. I then tried a full backup, but midway through a 3 hour, 7 disk process it would reject a disk on a regular basis. You cannot test disks beforehand and cannot reuse them afterward, so you just hope that it will make it through the 7 disk process without a hitch. In short, this is the worst software experience I have had in years. Getting bad and slow tech support, and finding out that having OEM Windows could prevent usage for the main reason I bought the program. On top of that, their simple "one-button backup" was very annoying. I will say, that if your computer has the perfect configuration for the program, it looks like it is a nice program.
Rating: Summary: Save your money or at least read their supported drives Review: I bought this software without looking at their web site first to find out what CDRW it supports. Turns out it didn't support my NEC (from Dell) making the software pretty much useless. There support people didn't reply to me when I asked, "What should I do". Now I'm wondering if it would support a new DVD RW drive if I were to purchase one. Surely there must be an inexpensive backup solution that works (this is not it for my system).
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