The interface is attractive enough to keep my attention from wandering, and to keep me coming back until the job is done. That is important for someone like me.

Been using it the past day. As I browse and test Instasoft out, I like seeing all the encryption features and support for storage locations out on the net and the scheduling, and I think it is a good package for my wife’s workstation and my laptop.

As for my issues with Insofta Document Backup registration, it may have been because it was running in the tray (I did notice at some point). I use auto-hide, and this was a many-times rerun (although updated), so I didn’t want to spend much time on it (in cases like these, you can just read the earlier comments for those features which haven’t changed, and for alternatives). I was trying to remember to respond to #17′s comment about Windows Backup, list the expiring deals, and mention IE8 RC1 (I forgot to mention that IE8 doesn’t support Win7 yet).

#25, Phil, using the Volume Shadow-Copy Service (XP and higher, NTFS) will allow you to back-up locked files, however, there’s no guarantee that in-use files will be in a usable state. Further, when you restore them, existing files that you’re trying to overwrite with the backup can’t be locked, you’ll have to shut down whatever applications or processes have them locked.

Tested this with the Full backup, Incremental backup and Differential backup — works great! I was looking for a backup system that makes .zips and this does as well as burns to CD/DVDs. This gets a thumbs up from me. I’ll be using this as my backup software.

More than likely I would use it specifically to back up my photograph folders regularly. Sure, I can FTP it manually, but it would be nice to have them automatically backed up on my web server with the space I already have allocated rather than paying for a “service” to do this.

If so, how would I set that up? I also wouldn’t want it running continually.

I lost over 10% of my picture files and half of my music files are mixed in with each other after backing up my HD to a Western Digital Passport drive. I learned my lesson and would prefer to keep my pictures and other documents on the web server for backup purposes as well. If I had, I wouldn’t have lost over 5,000 photographs that appear to be unrecoverable other than through using a hex editor on each file 1 by 1 and hoping it will work.

(Funny thing is the mp3 will be playing, play part of another song for a few seconds, then go right back to the first song without missing a beat. Both songs are ruined. The images are mostly grey with sometimes part of the original file showing. Other times they are all grey. (the thumbnail). The funny thing is, when I plug the drive into a new computer, the thumbnail originally comes up as the photograph, then immediately garbles, never to return. I wish there was an easy fix for these photos as I suspect the data is all there somewhere for most of the messed up photos…)

This GAOTD is not bad at all even though it appears to be very slow indeed, not to mention that it doesn’t have crucial features such as the registry backup for instance.

So I think that the FREE ALTERNATIVES mentioned by Ashraf are much more effective and complete (especially TITAN BACKUP).

Comodo Backup is a very simple backup solution with no compression, folder sync, etc. so quite similar to this GAOTD.

Another good alternative, who nobody has mentioned till now, is definetely KAREN’s REPLICATOR, a pretty COOL backup program written by a geek GIRL (LOL!!): I have used it for weeks and I have to admit that I’ve never been disappointed.

Did I say that it’s FREE?? LOL!!

h ttp://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-Up-and-Recovery/Karens-Replicator.shtml

(remove space at beginning)

But if you want to BACKUP not just your files but even the whole DISK IMAGE, Titan Backup can do nothing from this point of view.

For that, you can use GHOST (quite expensive though….LOL!!) or better still the freeware MACRIUM REFLECT with which you can create DISK IMAGES, BOOT CD for restore, that you can restore even without installing Reflect, as well as file BACKUP ARCHIVES using Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service to ensure ‘point in time’ data accuracy, meaning that you can create a full backup of your hard drive through imaging even when you’re logged on in Windows.

The FREE VERSION of MACRIUM REFLECT creates disk or partition images and access them from Windows Explorer but can also create Linux Rescue CD or BartPE Rescue CD, which has network support so you can save the created image to another computer amd directly burn the Live CD from the software (no bad isn’t it??): it has also a scheduler where you can create backup from the defined time.

So no need to use Norton Ghost because MACRIUM REFLECT can do the same job pretty well.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

h ttp://www.macrium.com/ReflectFree.asp

(remove space at beginning)

32 Bit (Vista, XP): http://www.macrium.com/download/setupfree.asp?OS=x86&DLSource=000000

64 Bit (Vista x64, XP x64): http://www.macrium.com/download/setupfree.asp?OS=x64&DLSource=000000

In another way, TITAN BACKUP is probably better than MACRIUM as for as the FILE BACKUP is concerned thanks to the SYNC FUNCTION that the FREE VERSION of MACRIUM REFLECT doesn’t have (or at least I couldn’t find the feature…LOL!!).

Finally another good IMAGE, BACKUP Drives and Partitions PROGRAM I think is worth having a look at is definetely DriveImage XML, an easy to use and reliable program for imaging and backing up partitions and logical drives!!

KEY FEATURES:

# Backup logical drives and partitions to image files
# Browse these images, view and extract files
# Restore these images to the same or a different drive
# Copy directly from drive to drive
# Schedule automatic backups with your Task Scheduler
# Image creation uses Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Services (VSS), allowing users to create safe “hot images” even from drives currently in use.
# Images are stored in XML files, allowing you to process them with 3rd party tools amd restore images to drives without having to reboot.
# Two different compression levels.
# It can backup image and restore drives formatted with FAT 12, 16, 32 and NTFS.
# Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista compatible.

But the best part of it is that..it’s FREE for personal use…LOL!!

h ttp://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm?

(remove space at beginning)

Have a great weekend.

Good night from ITALY!!

Giovanni

This GAOTD is not bad at all even though it appears to be very slow indeed, not to mention that it doesn’t have crucial features such as the registry backup for instance.

So I think that the FREE ALTERNATIVES mentioned by Ashraf are much more effective and complete (especially TITAN BACKUP).

Comodo Backup is a very simple backup solution with no compression, folder sync, etc. so quite similar to this GAOTD.

Another good alternative, who nobody has mentioned till now, is definetely KAREN’s REPLICATOR, a pretty COOL backup program written by a geek GIRL (LOL!!): I have used it for weeks and I have to admit that I’ve never been disappointed.

Did I say that it’s FREE?? LOL!!

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-Up-and-Recovery/Karens-Replicator.shtml

But if you want to BACKUP not just your files but even the whole DISK IMAGE, Titan Backup can do nothing from this point of view.

For that, you can use GHOST (quite expensive though….LOL!!) or better still the freeware MACRIUM REFLECT with which you can create DISK IMAGES, BOOT CD for restore, that you can restore even without installing Reflect, as well as file BACKUP ARCHIVES using Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service to ensure ‘point in time’ data accuracy, meaning that you can create a full backup of your hard drive through imaging even when you’re logged on in Windows.

The FREE VERSION of MACRIUM REFLECT creates disk or partition images and access them from Windows Explorer but can also create Linux Rescue CD or BartPE Rescue CD, which has network support so you can save the created image to another computer amd directly burn the Live CD from the software (no bad isn’t it??): it has also a scheduler where you can create backup from the defined time.

So no need to use Norton Ghost because MACRIUM REFLECT can do the same job pretty well.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

http://www.macrium.com/ReflectFree.asp

32 Bit (Vista, XP): http://www.macrium.com/download/setupfree.asp?OS=x86&DLSource=000000

64 Bit (Vista x64, XP x64): http://www.macrium.com/download/setupfree.asp?OS=x64&DLSource=000000

In another way, TITAN BACKUP is probably better than MACRIUM as for as the FILE BACKUP is concerned thanks to the SYNC FUNCTION that the FREE VERSION of MACRIUM REFLECT doesn’t have (or at least I couldn’t find the feature…LOL!!).

Finally another good IMAGE, BACKUP Drives and Partitions PROGRAM I think is worth having a look at is definetely DriveImage XML, an easy to use and reliable program for imaging and backing up partitions and logical drives!!

KEY FEATURES:

# Backup logical drives and partitions to image files
# Browse these images, view and extract files
# Restore these images to the same or a different drive
# Copy directly from drive to drive
# Schedule automatic backups with your Task Scheduler
# Image creation uses Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Services (VSS), allowing users to create safe “hot images” even from drives currently in use.
# Images are stored in XML files, allowing you to process them with 3rd party tools amd restore images to drives without having to reboot.
# Two different compression levels.
# It can backup image and restore drives formatted with FAT 12, 16, 32 and NTFS.
# Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista compatible.

But the best part of it is that..it’s FREE for personal use…LOL!!

http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm?

Have a great weekend.

Good night from ITALY!!

Giovanni