What is it that having certain browsers & IP addresses has to do with Backup? I use Todo Workstation 2.5 that I got on this very site, well over a year ago, it has a WinPE bootable CD, & images my entire hard drive.

Backing up over the net is that "cloud" type stuff that one can't depend upon. If one has a known working backup drive, that's in your hand & not the sky, that's more secure. As well as fast, with USB 3.0 ports.

Todo Workstation 2.5 also handles file backups very well. This is garbage & I've never heard of the brand name until now.

Giovanni, thanks for your contrubitions to the site, I've tried some of your alternative offerings & some are good. Please continue to express your opinions on the site.

Cat

@TK and other GAOTD users that tried to help.

TK perfect information !!! - I deleted offending Reg entry and now have access to the website. Really appreciate the help !!!!!

There are no "checks and balances" in this software. It does not indicate / respond to any error in the backup or even react to standard FTP error messages sent by the website I'm backing up. That's unbelievable!

You might as well place your valuable data into empty bottles and toss them in the sea, hoping your data may come back to you some day....

Nothing is more useless than a parachute that doesn't open. Exact data backup IS your parachute! Half a chute won't do.

Follow-up post: What looked promising turned out a dissapointment. Setting up a profile is easy but after that I had the same experiences as everybody else here. Failing back-ups and corrupted archives. The backups are completely useless. This software still needs a LOT of work.

Uninstalled and thumbed down. Thanks anyway GOTD. Btw I didn't have any problems registering.

looks like a decent tool which does its job pretty flawlessly. Giovanni, you didn't test this. If you're the only one who got this to work flawlessly, then please explain how to the rest of us.

Thanks, Giovanni; from the experiences reported above, it looks like it would be much more prudent to use Xclone or other alternative rather than today's GAOTD, unless of course they fix the problems noted. Thanks again for your timely suggestions, but if you don't mind my asking, have you found any good comparisons of this particular specialized variety of software?

Absolutely useless. What good is backing up my site if I cannot use SFTP? A complete waste of time. Uninstalled.

Does BackupSF support SFTP?

Toss up on whether I'll bother with this one today. I have a couple of small wordpress sites which this would be great for, if I could trust it to work, but a) given that so many people say it doesn't and b) the fact that it takes me 12 mouseclicks to disable and re-enable my AV software when I want to install any GOTD software now, I have to really be sure I WANT it before I go through the trouble of installing it. Thanks Giovanni #14 for the alternative choices. May try those instead, since I can just download and install WITHOUT having to disable anything first.

While I think this program is safe to install, on my computer using Windows 7, 32b bit, Comodo anti-virus flagged it as a threat and quarantined one of the install files. The writer of the program might want to submit it to Comodo for review.

But in any case,
Think about this for a second. If you have or are constructing a website how did you (or plan to) publish the files?

If you use a program similar to FireFTP for Firefox, just use the "download" feature to save all the files from your website to a backup folder on your hard drive.

And as Giovanni says, FireFTP & Firefox are FREE!!

Dear Giovanni,

Sorry to say that but several times I see you speaking in similar ways so now I will manifest.
I do like very much your comments and *really* missed them a lot specially in a period of time which you left because of stuff people said against you. So please take that into account.

Software providers *deserve* our support (yes, FINANCIAL support either) for the hard work they put in a tool, in some cases leaving other boring jobs or projects in the hopes of contributing with something very special to all of us. WHICH THEY DO!, otherwise their tools wouldn't be 'gems'. To be more specific, they are not to be laughed like fools we should ignore while reaping the sweat of their labor. I know the case of a man who left providing his services after 200.000 downloads and *not a single penny* received in reward. Sometimes the simplest function we miss we will never see again under the sun if a person decides to quit. You are a software researcher as I am, you KNOW that it's truth as there are plenty of cases out there concerning programs which simply disappeared, *even from the internet* remaining just a few sites with the offer pointing to 404.

And c'mon, guys, we're talking on software which often we use several times a day - you certainly pay a beer to people who make less impact in your Life but you never gave a dollar to the software provider that each and every day saves your skin... Be reasonable!

Please, please, I don't want to offend you but make you to meditate on this and skip that part of your posts.

Excelsior!

WRONG:
It is from the UKRAINE.
Dmitry Goncharenko
Gagarina str. Bld 83. app.16/1
Cherkassy, UA 18000
Ukraine

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: BACKUPSF.COM
Created on: 16-Jan-12
Expires on: 16-Jan-13
Last Updated on: 06-Apr-12

No support for SSH, so this is a waste for me. The FIRST thing I do on all of the servers I admin is turn FTP off so this software is useless to me.

Today's giveaway, despite having a pretty low GAOTD USER RATING at the moment, looks like a decent tool which does its job pretty flawlessly, since it sports everything you need to back up your website. In fact it uses FTP and MySQL scripts and supports Dropbox, SugarSync and other similar service which altogether make restoring your site a breeze.

My only concern is that, as every other GAOTD, it cannot be updated to future enhanced versions.

For this reason I recommend you using a better and more comprehensive FREE ALTERNATIVE called "XCLONER".

This is a superb FREE WEBSITE BACKUP & RESTORATION UTILITY (SOFTPEDIA PICK) designed for PHP/MySQL websites.

It comes as a stand-alone app, as a Joomla component and as a WordPress plugin.

All your generated BACKUPS can be moved, copied and restored without any hassle.

Key features:

· Backup and restore any PHP/MySQL website
· Create custom backups (full or partial backups)
· Generate automatic backups based on cronjobs
· Restore your backups anywhere
· Share custom backups with clients
· Store you backups on the Amazon S3 cloud
· Backend available languages: Spanish, Dutch, German, English
· Incremental MySQL backup supporting large databases
· Incremental file system scanning and backup supporting large websites
· Backup Split option for environments with limited filesize
· JQuery Start UI
· Incremental files restore supporting large backups
· Create full or partial backups based on your input
· Create simple or compressed backups based on your configuration input
· Possibility to exclude directory and files from the backup, manually or through cron settings(AJAX powered)
· Create backups based on a cron task, created backups can be stored on the local server, remotely through ftp or emailed
· Delete backups older than a certain number of days
· Ability to manage existing backups, rename/delete/move, publish to user frontend for sharing
· Possibility to clone any backup to another location, it can be done automatically by using the server functions or manually
· Configuration area lets you choose on how to generate backups based on your server possibilities
· Can choose to create backups by using only PHP, or by also using some server utilities to speed things up
· Store the generated backup locally, through email or a remote ftp location
· Send the generated backup to the Amazon S3 cloud service
· The generated clone of XCloner can be restored on a totally different server, with new server and mysql details
· Full Restore of a clone made by XCloner through simple and compressed archives
· Ability to restore the original files and directories permissions, as well as multiple clones to different locations, by using either a ftp simulated sessions, or direct restore through php
· Possibility to exclude database from importing

Compatibility:

· PHP 4.3.x or above
· Joomla 1.5.x native component
· Joomla 1.6.x native component
· Joomla 2.5.x native component
· WordPress 2.x and 3.x compatibility
· Any hosting environment running PHP, 5.2.0 recommended

Download this FREE amazing GEM here:

http://www.xcloner.com/

Screenshots.
http://webscripts.softpedia.com/scriptScreenshots/XCloner-Screenshots-66957.html

They ask you to pay for their support only.....but hey...it's not necessary....LOL!

Full tutorial:
http://www.xcloner.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
http://www.xcloner.com/download/5 (PDF manual)

Another great FREE tool for backing up any DATABASE and an ENTIRE WEBSITE with just a mouse click (very handy especially for web app developers) is also "AMPPS". As you can see from the link below, it can even create websites from scratch, by installing the latest version of Joomla!, WordPress, Magento & Dolphin, with its "Softaculous auto-installer"!!

Just give it a whirl to see what it can do for you (YES, you heard me right dudes: it's incredibly FREE):

http://www.ampps.com/tour

To backup their own websites, WordPress users can also use the following (hassle) FREE WP plugins, kissing data loss goodbye:

http://myeasywp.com/plugins/myeasybackup/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-dbmanager/

Enjoy!!

I just ran it and it said the backup was finished, making one think it worked, but I knew it finished too quickly for the size of site, so I tried to run it again and watched what it said:

[9/8/2012 8:31:52 AM] oawdogs: Accsess error: /www/www.pawdogs.com/community-policies/
[9/8/2012 8:31:52 AM] oawdogs: FTP error: Entering Passive Mode (173,255,200,107,204,66).

[9/8/2012 8:31:53 AM] oawdogs: Accsess error: /www/www.pawdogs.com/2012/
[9/8/2012 8:31:53 AM] oawdogs: FTP error: Entering Passive Mode (173,255,200,107,133,148).

[9/8/2012 8:31:53 AM] oawdogs: Backup finished.

That isn't the right path on the server that it has selected. It should be /home/pawdogs/public_html/. I just selected what I wanted to backup via the GUI. So maybe I can manually fix this in the settings, but the automatic setup has not quite worked out for me.

Would like to note that this is the pro version, not the unlimited version. This one is limited to 25 sites, which should not be a problem for most people.

The question I have; does this program support any kind of incremental backup? Does it look at the files before downloading them again or do you have to do a full backup each and everytime?

Downloaded and install w/o problem. BUT rigistration vith the supplied key gave ERROR "key invalid"???? Uninstalled!

Sorry to say. The developer did not read the feedback the last time. So once again they put out a useless software. I have WordPress sites. Just one site has quite a number of files and folders. Last time this software was offred you had to thick all folders in the three line. This time I once again tested to take only the root of the site. That means COPY EVERYTHING at root and up. I even gave it total access to the webhotell root. I get a dummy file again and a backup of 48kb. Yeah right the zip install for wordpress is in MB. DEVELOPER stop wasting ouer time and request shitloads of money for something that never has worked, and likely never will either :(.

Installed, couldn't figure out how to register, closed, tried to re-open, but even after a reboot, I get an error message that says the application is already running. The application can't be opened.

The previous version of this software had a really terrible flaw. It would download impartial database backups making you THINK you had a backup but you didn't. One day when checking I opened some of the database files in a text editor and scrolled to the bottom and found the files all ended prematurely with an error message.

The program didn't throw any error message, I thought I had weeks of good backups but in truth I had zero backups- luckily I didn't need them and was able to go back to manual backups.

The FTP backups also failed on both my websites- they would just die after a few hundred kilobytes out of a hundred megabytes or so were transferred.

installed without problems on Win 7 64-bit.

Really clear and simple interface. Haven't tested it thoroughly yet but looks promising. Will return later for more info.

@keefIt's because you've got a FunWeb infection and your IP (why reveal that???) points to KORNET, a range of IP's notorious for spamming and malware. I bet you get blocked on more than one site, the IP range is in quite a lot of blocklists. The good suffering the bad...

Downloaded and installed, but during the registration process I noticed this version allows only 25 FTP and 25 mySQL backups. Stopped and uninstalled, so I have no idea how the program actually works.

This will probably be more than sufficient for those who have a limited number of websites/databases to work with, but just won't work for me.

Thanks for the offer, though...

now this is a good dam Give Away Thanks GAOTD your the best!!!!

Tried to find out more info about software but :
Access Denied
The owner of this website (www.backupsf.com) has banned your access based on your browser's signature (0e252b1e-cl-ua-68). (Ref. 1010)

•Timestamp: Sat, 08 Sep 2012 01:09:53 -0700

•Your IP address: 14.37.43.30

•Requested URL: www.backupsf.com/

•Error reference number: 1010

•Server ID: FL_34F5

•Process ID: PID_1347091793.571-1-30244842

•User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; BTRS86393; User-agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1); InfoPath.2; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; ZemanaAID/FFFF0061; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; FunWebProducts; .NET4.0E; .NET4.0C; InfoPath.3)