a review by Tom Piper
Computer maintenance, like auto servicing, is a very important part of Macintosh security and performance. The favorite mantra among techies is “backup, Backup, BACKUP”! Many companies claim great utilities, but only a few live up to the high standards needed to meet this expectation, and protect our technology investments.
Data Backup Pro from Prosoft allows me to backup, restore, clone, and synchronize all of my very important files with minimal time and effort. I may be a seasoned professional, but this software even offers new computer users just the right amount of power, flexibility, and ease-of-use to help us backup our Mac and protect our valuable files.
This powerful utility includes an auto-notification tool that sends me an email or text message to inform me of any important status updates throughout the backup process. All I have to do is select a backup type (Clone, Simple Copy, Versioned, Synchronize, or Full/Incremental), select source and destination (either may be files, folders, volumes, RAIDS or drives), and run my backup to commence the process.
To be specific, a Clone is an exact bootable duplicate of the original in a new location (usually a separate hard drive). A Simple Copy is a basic backup of my Mac drive that includes some hidden information such that only the files that have been changed will be backed up later. A Versioned backup is very similar except the old deleted file versions will be stored inside a hidden area (similar to Time Machine, files from any backup date can be selected and restored). A Synchronize backup method merges the contents of two drives or folders, then places the complete set of data into both the source and the destination.
But, that’s not all. A very unique process is the Full backup which makes a complete copy all of the files and folders present in the source. When it is completed, the destination will contain additional folder names “Full-Date” which will contain all of the files and folders that were selected to copy. An Incremental backup is used with the Full backup to make a copy of the files which have been changed and created since the last Full or Incremental backup to create additional folders called “incremental-date”. Unlike Simple, Clone, and Versioned backups, Full/Incremental Backups do not overwrite any preexisting files present in the destination drive/folder.
Instead of starting my backup immediately, I can choose to schedule the backup to happen anytime in the future. The Schedule tab displays all scheduled backup events for the backup, and allows me to schedule backup sets in a variety of ways including selected dates/time/data, reoccurring internals, specific events (drive mounting, system powering on), and specific days of the week. A delightful new addition is when it provides notifications when backups are complete through the Data Backup application, through the Mac OS X notification center, and by email/SMS (text message).
The Data Backup Pro Dashboard view supplies me with performance information while my backup is running. It also shows all scheduled events and the history for all backups, synchronizes and restores in one place. The informative graph shows the number of files scanned per second, the number of files copied per second, and the number of bytes copied per second. I can even scroll back to the beginning of the backup, and zoom in or out on the graph. An overview of the backup includes information such as the number of files selected, the number copied, maximum and current rates and the start time of the backup.
For more information about Data Backup Pro, go to prosofteng.com/databackup, and purchase for only $49.99. This is just one of a great family of Prosoft products which also includes Data Rescue, Drive Genius, Picture Rescue and CleanExit. I have used Prosoft software for many years, and find these utilities to be reliable, resourceful and reasonable . . . they never disappoint!
Comments