WinBackup 2.0

Reviewed by Terry Bibo

Backups are an essential chore in PC operation and maintenance. We must take it for granted that, sooner or later, our PC is going to crash through mechanical or system failure, or by infection from malicious software. There are various procedures for backing up, and almost limitless strategies depending on your requirements and your knowledge of how to meet those requirements. The requirements of a home PC user would be less demanding than those of a small to medium business (SMB), and far less than those of a large corporation. All worthwhile backup programs on the market these days will meet the essential requirements of home users, SMBs, and corporations. The only difference is in how they do that. My criteria for critical assessment are functionality and user friendliness. I have waxed enthusiastic in these pages over currently available backup software and made my recommendations. But times change, and with the changes come advances in presentation that can make a big impact. I make no apology for reviewing Uniblue Systems' WinBackup 2.0 enthusiastically.

winbackupThe immediate appeal was the intuitive simplicity of layout without omitting any appropriate information. The Menu bar is reduced to three items and the Toolbar and its component Navigation Bar have no more than essential icons. And yet, all information pertinent to the job and each phase in the job is plainly presented, throughout the routine of backing up or restoring, in the familiar Windows XP format of the Tasks and Job Summary panes.Anyone moderately familiar with backup procedures will easily walk through the routine without needing the help file. But, for those who have to learn, there is an excellent printable PDF manual and an even better Help file with instructional videos running under Macromedia Flash Player.For all its simplicity, WinBackup 2.0 adheres to the convention of backing up to all common media from hard drives, through USB drives and removable drives, to CD and DVD, and digital tape or local area network.

To create a new backup, simply click on 'Create New Job' in the Tasks pane and follow the logical path of 'Select Files', 'Save To', 'Job Settings' and 'Run Backup'.

The needs for defining backup type, compression, filtering and security are addressed, and the choices are plainly presented. In terms of training employees in a business environment, there is no likelihood of misinterpretation and the concept should be easily grasped. This is the standard pattern of presentation throughout the program and is a commendable approach.
The levels and values for verification, compression and security are well treated in the help files.
The backup archive is written to a file with a .w2b extension and is a proprietary format incompatible with the more popular .zip format, which I would have preferred as an independent recovery avenue

All of this leads to a fast and efficient approach to initial full backups and subsequent incremental backups, which are saved as Backup Jobs with a meaningful name for updating, and which can be conveniently scheduled to run on a regular basis.
Jobs can be defined by importance or frequency: full backups to be done weekly perhaps and incremental backups daily. An incremental backup will only backup files that have been added or altered since the previous backup, whether that be full or incremental, and is a fast and convenient way of preserving data integrity. But, in restoration, each incremental backup will have to be restored independently after the full backup to reach the last good state.

To assist in setting up an initial backup strategy there are a number of shortcuts provided to suggested popular backup jobs. These appear along with regular drive entries in a familiar Windows Explorer frame when 'Select Files' is chosen to nominate what files and folders to backup.
The present list is: Internet Explorer, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Windows, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Outlook Express. Selecting any one of these will automatically include all sub-folders and their full complement of files. Any individual file or folder can be unticked to prevent it being included in the backup.

An important feature of WinBackup 2.0 is in being able to ensure uniqueness of archives holding essentially the same data. If an audit trail of 'Widget Sales' is to be kept, then each backup can be appended automatically with a Date and Time stamp, or other option, at the time of backup.
So backups made on 01/09/05 and 01/10/05 would be filed as: 20050901Widget Sales.w2b and 20051001Widget Sales.w2b.

When 'Run Backup' is clicked on the Navigation Bar it opens a status screen showing backup progress and a log of events.

Restoring a backup is as simple as its creation, and follows exactly the same procedure for the selection of jobs, folders and files. Backups can be restored to the original location or a new folder, or even to another PC if desired, making transfer of data between laptop and desktop PC a simple procedure. A single file can be opened directly within the restore process by double clicking on it.
Restoration can be refined to Missing Files Only, in which case only files that exist in the archive file but not in the target file will be restored; and All Files, in which case all files in the archive directory will replace files in the target directory without checking on whether the files are older or newer.

It is all too easy! Anyone wanting to buy a very capable backup program would have to seriously consider the advantages WinBackup 2.0 offers over its competitors.