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but how can anyone claim "Backup Program" when it doesn't even support tapes? It's not like DAT and DLT is that ancient, is it?

Does it just backup files u tell it to? or are there some presets for the average person who doesn't know what or exactly how much they want to backup?

where did the icon for stories like this come from. When ever i see it i think GOBE or BeOS or something. It's driving me nuts.

No, this is the icon we use for this:
office suite news, productivity, book review, generic review.
So, it fits.

LIUtilities has another product, WinTasks. At first, WinTasks looks really good too. And then you find it has all sorts of page faults and is basically causing your system to run more slowly. And it seems to cause other apps to crash. I bought this program (WinTasks Pro), used it for a while, and now it simply sits somewhere on my drive spinning around -- spinware.

Also, the reviewer didn't seem to test what backup is really for -- and that is to RESTORE your system. It's nice to make backups, but it's just a waste of time, money, energy, and expectations if the restore doesn't work well.

--ms

You make backups to restore your data? What a novel idea!

Most of the people that I finally convince to make backups, won't take my advice and backup to floppy disk. You can guarantee that they won't restore!

Well, in most cases, a full system 'restore' isn't really necessary, or shouldn't be to restore any critical data files.
The trick is (speaking from a Windows standpoint), when you install the OS, split your drive into two partitions - one for the OS and programs, and the other for data.
Once you have Windows installed, you can use TweakUI to put your Internet Explorer favorites, My Documents, and Desktop folders on the data partition. (And if you don't use IE, you can put your Mozilla/Phoenix bookmarks there too - I assume you can do the same with Opera). So basically, in WinXP, instead of your favorites folder being in C:Documents and Settings<username>Favorites (or whatever), it would be in D:DataFavorites. Not only is this easier to get to, but it's also much easier to back up.
As far as individual program data files go, save those to your data partition too, as there's not many programs out there that don't have this option. For example, if you use Kazaa(Lite), change your Media folder to point to D:DataMP3.
You could even go a step further and store certain program folders (such as Acrobat, Winamp, Winrar, Phoenix, etc) that can run without having to be installed on your data partition. That way, if your OS ever needs a clean install, you'll have instant access to all those programs from your data partition. (And if you wanted to go even further than that, you can use a program called Dependency Walker to make many programs that must be installed work without being installed, but even I don't go that far.)
Then, when it's time to back up, all you have to do is copy the files from your data partition somewhere else - a program like WinBackup would be perfect for such tasks.
About the only thing you would lose if your OS partition crashes is program settings (which are usually stored in the registry), but what I have found is that if I use a total system restore solution (such as Ghost), unless I want to back up once a week and have many multi-gig images lying around, by the time I get around to restoring, most of the programs on my system were out of date anyway. (Speaking of images, how the hell are you supposed to back up a 10-15GB partition to CD? It's just not practical.)

I wonder if there is a program like this available on Linux, that supports backup media other than tape?

It looks like the OSNews is stripping out backslashes from comments, so obviously my paths above aren't looking right - just insert a backslash where appropriate

haha...

i believe the icon used is the old icon from kword...:b

Yes, it is. So?

odd, i think it's from something but that something is something i never used. I have no problem with it, I was just curious.

Eugenia,

The original question was asking where the icon comes from, not why it was used. Karl answered that question.


I'm a little confused at the 10/10 if it wont backup to tape or ftp. Designed to be cheap and cheerful i guess...

jon

I actually user acronis trueimage. All Windows filesystems and ext2,ext3, and reiserfs.

www.acronis.com

I didn't find the answer to this on the site's FAQ or white papers. Thought maybe somebody with the app might know.

Is the encryption done in some type of known format, or is it in a LIUtilities proprietary format? If these guys disappear, am I going to have CDs/DVDs of inaccessible data (assuming I can't run the program on whatever the latest version of windows will be)?

Hmmm. Nah. If you can't do tape, it's not doing business with me. Nice to think that, despite every modern user's obviously unjustified dislike of tape, my old external Iomega 5gb (10 w/ compression) can still be used in traditional fashion if I give it a chance. Is tape really so terrible? It's unfortunate that when I got it, the only reason it wasn't used much is because the software was proprietary.

As some people have commented the idea of backing up every single byte of data seems a bit overkill, but what is so good about tape drives these days. About the biggest selling point that I have ever heard is that they could hold several GB's on one tape, but you can hold several GB's on a DVD as well. As the price comes down on the drives and the media it may be just as cost effective to use DVD sometime in the near future.

I agree, for home users the idea of using tapes is sort of overkill unless you want to backup every single thing on your hard drive to a 40 GB tape.

For most users, it's eaiser and more cost effictive to backup to CDs or DVDs. DVD burners are still expensive, but the prices have been droping. And blank DVD-Rs cost less than a dollar on the internet.

Can windows xp read tape drives like a hard drive or any other form of removeable storange? Or do you have to use special software? If windows recongizes it and can write to it without having to use special software than you can backup to it using winbackup.