Backup Now! Professional Edition

Rating:
Summary: Sadly, this doesn't work for me
Review: I bought this product because I was looking for a program that would do drive images and file backups. It even got a PC magazine editor's choice. I has read a couple of negative reviews here and elsewhere, but decided to buy it anyhow.

I wish I hadn't.

While waiting for my Amazon order, I downloaded the demo, it had a couple of problems, but I thought the full version would fix it. Nope. I have yet to successfully make any sort of backup with this program. I tried to create a drive image several times, each time it crashes on the 3rd or 4th disk. Last night I tried just backing up important files and it crashed on the 2nd disk. The crashed come in the form of a cryptic error message and the job stops, no chance for recovery.

Their tech support leaves a lot to be desired. It's a treacherous journey just trying to figure out where to ask a question, then they will usually blame it on poor media, or just suggest that you try things you told them you've already tried.

Rating:
Summary: Sadly, this doesn't work for me
Review: I bought this product because I was looking for a program that would do drive images and file backups. It even got a PC magazine editor's choice. I has read a couple of negative reviews here and elsewhere, but decided to buy it anyhow.

I wish I hadn't.

While waiting for my Amazon order, I downloaded the demo, it had a couple of problems, but I thought the full version would fix it. Nope. I have yet to successfully make any sort of backup with this program. I tried to create a drive image several times, each time it crashes on the 3rd or 4th disk. Last night I tried just backing up important files and it crashed on the 2nd disk. The crashed come in the form of a cryptic error message and the job stops, no chance for recovery.

Their tech support leaves a lot to be desired. It's a treacherous journey just trying to figure out where to ask a question, then they will usually blame it on poor media, or just suggest that you try things you told them you've already tried.

Rating:
Summary: Try the demo version first
Review: I bought this software and just cannot get it to run on my computer with Win2k. Althought the computer is very new and teh CDRW is supposed ot be compatible, the backups just don't work. Moreover, the software ruins the CD-RWs so that you cannot reformet them again.

Tech support only tells you to buy better CDRWs and does not reply any more when you tell them that you use already the CDRWs they recommend.

For me it was a big waste of money!

Rating:
Summary: Easy to backup; hard to restore
Review: Maybe impossible to restore. I bought this product and did a backup to my CD drive. Tried to restore several times, but the program cannot read the data it wrote. It does the backup quick and easy, but could not restore one single file.

Rating:
Summary: BACKUP NOW does not fully support Sanyo and Iomega Drives
Review: Overall, this product seems to work pretty well. I've been able to backup individual files, and restore them at will. I've made full system backups, but since I haven't had a reason to resore them yet, I'll have to reserve judgement on that portion.

Most of my gripes are over fairly small items. For example, you can schedule your backups to run automatically at the interval of your choosing, but after every backup the disk ejects. So you need to make a habit of reinserting the disk after every backup. Why not give the user the option to eject after backup?

The other buggy thing that I've found is that in their file manager, where you pick which items you want to backup, the sort by name doesn't work. You can try to use this sort option, but it's pretty random.

Other than that, it's a decent package.

Rating:
Summary: Decent, but has some quirks
Review: Overall, this product seems to work pretty well. I've been able to backup individual files, and restore them at will. I've made full system backups, but since I haven't had a reason to resore them yet, I'll have to reserve judgement on that portion.

Most of my gripes are over fairly small items. For example, you can schedule your backups to run automatically at the interval of your choosing, but after every backup the disk ejects. So you need to make a habit of reinserting the disk after every backup. Why not give the user the option to eject after backup?

The other buggy thing that I've found is that in their file manager, where you pick which items you want to backup, the sort by name doesn't work. You can try to use this sort option, but it's pretty random.

Other than that, it's a decent package.

Rating:
Summary: BACKUP NOW does not fully support Sanyo and Iomega Drives
Review: The APPEND FEATURE, which allows backing-up more than 1 file to a CD such as small Incremental and Differential backups, is not supported for SANYO and IOMEGA 12x drives. That may make using this product in large company invironments unacceptable. A seperate CD must be used for each and every Incremental and Differential backup. Also, product support is so stealth and insulated from the user as to be virtually non existent.