News :: 15MR: Alcyone Backup v1.1
Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review. Today’s application is Alcyone Backup version 1.1 by Alcyonesoft—A simple backup tool with some basic filtering.
As Giveaway of the Day states:
“Alcyone Backup is a simple but powerful data back-up tool with a user-friendly eye-catching interface and a built-in scheduler.
To start working with the program you simply specify your profile and proceed by adding tasks to it. You can also specify the source and destination folders as well as include and exclude file masks, allow to backup subfolders and hidden files, select backup method – you’ll be surprised how easy the back-up process can be. Software developers might especially like the built-in presets for backing up source texts (Delphi, C++ sources etc.).
The scheduler lets you plan the back-up process in advance: daily, weekly, monthly – as often as you wish.
Alcyone Backup is not overloaded with useless additional features and interface improvements.”
Quick Pros
- Backups are relatively quick
- Build multiple jobs in a single profile
- Options for scheduling, type of backup, backup rules and more
- Predesigned rules for Delphi and C++ development
Quick Cons
- Profile names in drop-down do not update until application is restarted
- On zip-file setting, the application still makes a backup of the folder as well as a zip
- Predefined rules lacking for advanced programming jobs
- If you try to backup on the same day again, you will get IO Errors; Folders/zips are set up with only a date stamp, no time stamp
- Lacking ability to add comments or other information to backups for simple revisioning
- No incremental/diff backups
Expansion
I have been looking for a good application to manage my source a little better lately; Moreso a desktop revisioning system that is a little easier to work with than TortoiseSVN or otherwise. While having the predefined rules were great, I found myself building separate rules for Delphi anyways because of special files I was using with Delphi that I did not want to lose and changed often. It was nice to be able to build ‘jobs’ in a profile that when ran, will run the whole jobset, so I could build special backups as well into one job. A nice feature.
An issue arose however; I went to hit ‘Start’ a second time and saw an IO Errors count go up. I was using the zip-file format and couldn’t see why, with 10 files, that I had 57 IO Errors. I went into the backup folder, and even though I was using the zip-file format, the application was also still backing up the whole folder; I’m assuming this is a bug, but irritating none the less. I generally ZIP for a number of reasons; Prevent myself from going back and tinkering with old code on accident while reviewing old code as well as to keep organized to say the least. I also noticed that the files were named with only a date, and not a date-time stamp. This would explain the IO Errors; It was trying to insert files into folders and zips that were already there. Now, for casual daily-or-more backups, this wouldn’t be an issue. However, in this case where there is a bit of a gearing towards developers, this does blow the use for versioning out. I can sometimes go through two, three or more versions in a day that I need to keep a backup of each, and this application would be more work to manage this. To top the versioning issue as well, there is no way to add comments or such to this.
Final Verdict
This application would be good for a casual coder who only wants a little security from accidental deletes or for people who want to back up other things daily. If you’re planning on doing versioning or a lot of backups each day, I’d steer clear of this application for now. While the application is nice, the zip-file functionality appears broken and is limited in use for coders and still geared towards those who are just looking for scheduling. While the price is reasonable, $19.95, it is a ‘Lite’ backup application reflecting the price in itself with a lack of great detail in functionality. If you think you have a use for folder backups like this, might as well give it a try; For now, with the zip functionality broken, if you are looking to this to save space, there’s going to be more work involved in maintaining the backups of this application. As for pay, I’d likely not pay $19.95 for this application due to that it does not do what I need and the bugs that arose.
Posted by BladedThoth on Monday, March 12, 2007
