15-Minute Reviews :: Document Backup v4.0.0.101

Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s review is on Document Backup version 4.0.0.101 by Insofta Development – A file backup application.

Software Description

As Giveaway of the Day states:

“Document Backup is an easy-to-use program intended to automatically back up important data to your hard disk, a local area network, a CD or DVD or even to an FTP server. Compressed backups (in the zip format) save space and incremental backups save time.

Thanks to the built-in scheduler, you can stop worrying about the safety of your data. Document Backup makes backups of your data in a fully automatic mode. You can also use any other scheduler to schedule items to be backed up.

The convenient setup wizards of Document Backup make the process of creating backup copies easy even for a beginner, but advanced options are also available.”

Quick Pros

• Easy-to-use wizard for setting up backup tasks
• Built-in burning functionality as well as LAN and FTP backup
• Compression, encryption and incremental backups (And all work together)
• File splitting to work with media and OS limitations
• Capability to make a shortcut to desktop to trigger backup functionality
• Memory usage shrinks to under 2MB while in task tray

Quick Cons

• No secure FTP support
• No differential backup functionality
• No inclusion/exclusion functionality See note at end

Expansion

Upon my first launch of this application, I was greeted by a wizard interface right from the start. Aiming to help you build your first backup task, The wizard interface is dead-simple; Explaining everything as you go quite clearly. The wizard is only a few steps and gets a basic setup. Setting up the task name; directory or directories you’d like to backup; where you’d like to backup to including Local/LAN, CD/DVD burning built-in and FTP uploading as well; And the scheduler functionality with options for daily backups, specific days of the week or days of the month. If you do want to alter some of the other options including setting up compression quality, encryption and type of backup, at the end of the wizard there is a checkbox for opening the tabbed dialog box at the end of the wizard (Which I recommend).

In the tabbed dialog box, you will find many other settings. The Storage tab has settings for compression quality; The ability to set specific masks for files not to compress and just inject into the archive (Handy for pre-compressed files such as MP3s, JPEGs, RAR and other compressed formats); As well as the ability to split the archive, not only for CD and DVD, but would be handy to surpass the typical 4GB file size limitation for the backup file. The Advanced tab is where you choose your backup type from two forms of full backup and incremental backup, as well as if you want to store your backups in timestamped folders (Which I strongly recommend using if you are doing incremental backups on local/LAN or FTP). The Encryption tab offers AES 128-bit and 256-bit encryption as well.

The main window is easy to follow as well; Laid out much like a Windows Explorer window, you have the menus and action buttons along the top, as well as a series of buttons and information on the left side of the window. In the center are the icons for the backup tasks as well, which can be sorted and viewed much like Windows Explorer as well.

There are a few extra features I felt was interesting in this application as well. The ability to make a shortcut that will appear on the desktop (Which can be moved) so that you can trigger the backup whenever you need to; This may be handy for those working on projects and wanted to keep revisions on their project, without having to fire up the application every time just to do so. As well, the fact that this application offloads portions which are in memory as soon as it is minimized to tray, bringing the memory usage to under 2MB makes this easy to maintain without interfering with performance on a lower-memory system as well.

A few notes I should mention with this application. As with many of applications I review, there is no secure FTP functionality built-in, exposing your username and password to the entire chain between you and your FTP account’s location. These applications really should be looking at Secure FTP from the very start. As well, even though the greatness of the ability to combine incremental backups with compression and encryption is included in this title, there is no differential functionality here which some developers and projects may be a critical need.

Finally, while this application does have some strength and features, there is one major feature missing here; The ability to use inclusion and exclusion rules. This really could be a push-off for developers and other project maintainers just for the fact that they can not purge compile-time files and similar without an effort before a backup is ran; This would become a lot of wasted space for a developer and could end up being the point that would make a developer look elsewhere. See note at end

Final Verdict

I do find this application intuitive and the fact that all the functionality works with compressed and encrypted functions as well. I do like the idea of having a shortcut available for quick backups, but on the flipside I would typically use this function while developing, and the lack of inclusion/exclusion rules as well as no differential functionality makes this a hard choice. However, for free, most home users looking for an easy backup solution may still find this a good choice. As for paying $29.00 for this title, it isn’t a bad title if you’re not looking for advanced functionality such as differential and inclusion/exclusion rules, which most people looking to use this application likely won’t be.

Extension:

While I can not currently verify, a member on Giveaway of the Day by the name of Jay has pointed out that there is inclusion/exclusion rules in place, though it seems it may be hidden. Click here to read his post! – I’ll try to verify it later. Thanks Jay!

Posted by BladedThoth on Wednesday, September 05, 2007