Installatioin proved hopeless
I tried once but despite reading the comments above and riunning setup first when I ran the programme it was still a 30 day trial version and help/about did NOT say givewawayoftheday. I then tried reinstalling but it insisted even after a reboot that sometjhing else was using the program it was lying so I gave up in disgust

For those looking for a disk image freeware, try Clonezilla (available at: http://www.clonezilla.org/). Clonezilla works flawlessly on vista, images a 45 G hard drive in 50-60 minutes and restores it in 30 minutes.

Clonezilla download link: http://www.clonezilla.org/download/sourceforge/.

BTW, comment #8's DriverMax link leads to V.2.4. However, new version V.4.3 is available already: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Miscellaneous/DriverMax.shtml .

FYI.

I figured out why so many are having problems registering. When you close the window it is actually still running in your systray, so make sure that you do a File>Exit. Then run or rerun the activate and then reopen the software and it will show properly under About as registered.

THANK YOU, thank you, thank you # 29.

I too was going nuts trying to get the program to go from trial to non-trial; I tried everything I could think of. When I killed the program (or ended it) in my task manager like you suggested and then re-opened the GOTD offer, it then said it was registered to GiveawayoftheDay!

In response to Post #30: To backup your Outlook files, try either EazyBackup or Outback Plus from AJSystems: http://ajsystems.com/
Not free, but excellent software.

I've been using Macrium Reflect, a previous Giveaway by GAOTD. It can backup whole partitions, so it is a more complete tool than this one, but this takes a lot of space. Of course, like this tool MR can still backup documents too, but this seems to be a very slow operation.

Can someone share their expiriences with this program? It would be good to make a comparision.

I have tried for the past 6 hours to get this program to make a backup via FTP to my web server to no avail.

Anyone else getting this to work?

I have been running Retrospect, which has failed to back up correctly for a couple of weeks, and I could not work out how to get in the backup without the program.

I installed this, and ended up with a 56GB zip file. I successfully restored a file with ease through the program.

AND I went through 7-zip and was able to locate and open the files inside it. So I don't need the program to restore.

Great program. Thank you.

Instructions in no. 2 work like a charm.

One thing I've found is helpful is to keep docs, etc on a partition separate from the system files. If you have everything on same disk and the system crashes, one way to keep from losing everything is to install a new HD as master and then make the drive with the dead system as slave, then you can get your data from the old drive and save it.

You never can tell though, when a crash will happen or what it will affect until it's too late. And its so easy to get lazy about backing things up that even with the precautions I mentioned using, a backup prog for important docs is useful.

As for ppl who say pass on a giveaway just coz there are freeware alternatives, I figure even though I save the info on the freeware and often try it out as well, I still lose nothing by using the giveaway since its free too (unless for some other reason, it's crappy or has a problem).

I did find that when installing this giveaway, it worked best to install it and uncheck its option to run after installing, before running activate. When I forgot to tell it not to run and it tried to run after install, it froze and I had to kill it with taskmanager. After running install, it behaves as it should though. It installed and activated fine on the Vista machine too.

GAOTD is an awsome site ... I have several programs from here and appreciate every one of them. I didn't DL this one, but hey I check it every day. giveawayoftheday.com is one of my home pages!!! I'd like to thank ALL of the GAOTD staff, for making this site possible. Good Job people.
Owned

Basically this thing copies a folder for me? Thanks, but this program does little more than offer a false sense of security. If your HDD tanks, it's good to know your documents are saved, and in a compressed folder, but otherwise everything else will be lost. Not really worth the HDD space it takes.

Use 4 MB of HD real estate to do what Windows can do for me? No thanks. Actually I never have used the backup utilities provided with DOS or Windows. A small simple batch file can do the job and make use of any file compression utility installed on the computer.

If you're running Seagate or Maxtor drives, you can get a free version of Acronis TrueImage. It's built into the DiscWizard program.

Poster #45: no, there isnt a way to reinstall this program, since this program requires you to run activate.exe again after you install the program. Activate.exe won't run after today. My suggestion is you install this program to a flash drive today, and run activate.exe today, to get a registered version on a flash drive. I did a scan for registration keys using RecoverKeys, and a key for this program did not appear. This means that the key is not stored in the registry, so you can install to a flash drive and use this on multiple computers, as well as not loose the program if your computer crashes or you need to free up space.

Ive never done this with this program, so im not positive it will work, but you can always try. Also, yesterdays giveaway installed to a flash drive and moved between computers just fine for me, so this one probably will too.

Good luck!:)
Ryan

Looks really good I'll download it (I love the one from yesterday!) But I have a general question for all of you. If you install something and activate it is there a way to reinstall it later if you have to uninstall? Because I know on my laptop my harddrive is almost full and I won't be able to keep loading everything but don't want to lose the programs I've downloaded/installed.

The last few downloads i got here (including this one) didn't have a registration number or key--it is only the 30 day trial version. Am i missing something somewhere? It used to pop up after installation.
Thank you!!

Thanks anyway GAOTD, but I tried previous giveaways of Titan Backup and East-Tec Backup. I liked it so much, I bought East-Tec Backup for a special rate.

To posters numbers 7, 10, 11, 13, 17, and 21:
As I said in post #2, you activate the program by quitting the app (if you minimized it, you have to close it by right-clicking on its icon in the taskbar and selecting the close option), and running activate.exe once more. Refer to post number 2 for how to check that its registered.

Thanks GAOTD and Insofta!
Ryan

how is it different from Titan Backup, already proposed here?

Agree with Charles K, #32. You really do need to own your backup app so it can be re-installed for recovery on system crash or HDD failure. I also bought Ghost where he did & it's quite possibly the best software I've ever seen. It's most assuredly the best thing Norton, Symantec ever came up with.
For those same reasons, I'm also passing today. This type of give away should be one thats permanently yours. Otherwise it's quite useless when recovery is needed. In a case such as this, there needs to be an exception to the rule, "this give away must be installed before the time limit has expired", or at least installed the first time.

RUBBISH ALERT!

Todays GOTD is'nt worth the hard drive space to anyone who takes care of their PC and regularly backs up their work.

(We have a lot more than just documents too)

I tried #8 links... Pay software so not really worth putting here.

The Best of all Backup softwares exist to date. Thanks

Thanks, Ryan! (#2)...used your instructions and had no problem!

For those with more serious backup needs, there's a Windows command-line utility that's been available for years, downloadable for XP users, with a more-sophisticated version standard in Vista, called robocopy (robust file copy). A GUI is available. Robocopy has the advantage of copying whatever you need, including alternate data streams, attributes, timestamps, access control lists, owner info, auditing info, etc. It can resume interrupted transfers over a network, has synchronization and logging abilities, etc.

Clicked on Setup and installed the program. I closed the program by clicking on the "X" in the top right corner. Clicked on activate. The 30 day trial period was displayed. Uninstalled and ran setup again. This time I closed the program by going to File>Exit. Clicked on activate and the program activated. #29 closed the program by using the task manager. Could closing the program with the x be the problem?

One can do this manually with WinRAR (and achieve a better compression rate while doing so) and then choose what to do with the resulting archive(s). To boot, WinRAR is completely free.

Maybe I can help with backup issues.
Firstly, a backup program offered here is do do dead upon system crash as theres no way to recover your data with it. It will be lost, just like your system.
So to me, a backup program is one you "MUST" own & be able to re-install after installing Windows & drivers.

Secondly, I prefer a file backup program that allows me to view the data, not some encrypted looking DLL or some such thing. I prefer Norton Ghost over all others as an all in one solution for drive backup. It is available @ http://www.buycheapsoftware.com/ for $40.00 which to me, is cheap!
As it turned out, It's what I prefer as an all in one, drive backup solution. In fact, I'm using a recovered Ghost image of Vista Ultimate on a spare hard drive as I write this comment.
For file backup, freeware can do the job but there are a few reasonably priced programs in this category that do a file backup the way I like them done. Yes, that means I can view the data in the backup folder, be it on CD, DVD, spare internal hard drive or external hard drive. The very best program I've ever seen for this task is the one that comes pr-bundled with a Maxtor One Touch external hard drive. A good alternative at a fair price would be Second Copy.
If you don't have one, this might be a solution but remember this! How will you recover once a system is re-formatted? The answer is simple: You must own your backup software & have the ability to re-install it!
I love give away & appreciate what they do for us every day but nothing will ever convince me to put my faith or the data that I've collected over the years in a backup program I can't reinstall because I don't own it out rite. Having said that, I won't be trying todays offer for all the reasone I've spelled out in my comments above. backup software "MUST BE OWNED", not tested.

The Best of all Backup softwares exist to date , Acronis True Image Home 11.0, which takes the backup of entire C:, or D: or both and create a recovery cd which restores everything in minutes in the case of Complete Crash.

Will this software -- or any software -- back-up my outlook files without my having to first save them in PST format?

I thought that the program was not activating because I seemed to be getting the trial version every time I tried to start it. After I went into task manager and killed the program it then started as a registered version.

Neat program. Too bad my mother (who turns 50 today, btw), who is afraid that the computer will crash every time she presses the power button, knows how to do this manually, and doesn't trust programs that claim that they can do the same thing automatically...

Still I think it is pointless as this can be done with nearly any of the operating systems.

I'm passing on this one but not because I have any concerns about its operation. I'm passing because, like many user-level backup programs (free or not), it does not include differential backups.

Unlike incremental backups, differential backups capture all files modified since the last full backup, not just since the last backup. The backups are generally larger than incrementals and take more time to run but restoration is simpler. All you need is the full and the latest differential instead of, as someone mentioned earlier, the full and every incremental you have created since.

I recently had a hard drive tank on me and lost some data. Nothing critical but it was an inconvenience to lose it. For those of you who miss out on this freebie, I located a nice backup program that will do full, incremental or differential backups with features similar to the one offered today (backup to FTP, pre & post commands, etc.).

http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm

Pretty good.

Regardless of how I try to activate it, it says evaluation copy that will expire in 30 days. If they can't get this part right then I can't trust them with my data. That makes it useless and I uninstalled it. This company now has no credibility for me.

I followed the instructions in the Readme.txt file and it installed perfectly on XP - SP2. This comes at a perfect time for me as I was planning on manually backing up a couple of computers at home today.
MUCH THANKS GAOTD team!

How does this compare to the Comodo freeware?
Given the choice which will u choose??
Thank u Gaotd!!

installed twice aith activation before and after - still get 30 days evaluation period - no keys appear - please assist

thanks

What if computer crashes and HD requires reformating. Would one buy the program to recover data using Restore Data Wizard as activation would not worked in the future? I hope recovering files manually would be possible without the program.

I created a directory with txt files. Ran the backup, and deleted one of the txt files. Tried to unzip the file and it said that that file already existed (?) and that it was password protected (?), so it didn't recover the file.
If anyone could try to repeat this scenario it would be helpful to all members.

Installed Fine, Works great (Unfortunately I could only test a little bit because of time pressures) Activated PERFECTLY!
BTW, this is the latest version.

I had a few problems, it wouldn't install properly - after installation when I'd click on the desktop shortcut it would do nothing. I tried installing three times and could never get it to work. Couldn't get it registered either (I have Vista), ran the activation as administrator the 2nd time & that didn't work either.

I dont find any use for such backup softwares.
I make a folder for each month, copy all the files in that folder and then transfer to cd or dvd at the end of each month. I have now one dvd/cd for each month

Over 100 ratings, split almost half-and-half, but no comments yet? Of the listed features, only two pop out as something that my favorite backup utility, previously released here, didn't have; I don't think Macrium Reflect was able to back up to an FTP server and it saved the backups to a proprietary extention (but this allowed for some other neat tricks, such as higher level encryption and mounting to a virtual drive). Everything else was also included.

Assuming that all of these features do actually work well and that you missed Macrium Reflect, I suggest looking into this giveaway.

Thank you, GOTD, for again reminding us of the importance of regular backups. I briefly reviewed an earlier version of today's giveaway in post #40 of my utilities blog, and gained a good initial impression (though my favorite backup giveaway remains Titan Backup). Regrettably, I won't have time to evaluate and report on today's offering before it expires. I hope this is helpful.

I followed the instructions provided but the software still says 30-day trial. Some glitch in the activation/setup process today. Please fix so we can use this great program! Thanks GAOTD team!

This looks like just what I've been shopping for lately. I'm too tired from a 21 hour work day so, I'll just say thank you very much. I believe this will work for me. On Vista HP with 2G RAM it runs very quickly on a short test. You will have to re-start the program after activation to lose the trial screen. And if DarkOrbit has you frustrated by the player killers be sure to visit the sister site. Good day to you all.

We need a registration key that should be part of the Readme or Activation notice as it starts up in Evaluation Mode.

Even though I followed the directions in the readme.txt and activated after installing AND it was verified as "activated" it still has "trial version" labeled at the bottom of the software.

Other than that, it's a nice, intuitive program that gives you options without having to read a big manual.

Is there a way to get the reg key for this product before the 24 hours are up?

Thanks for all you do for everyone GAOTD.