Backup4all 3 Review [Gearfire Productivity]
Note: The following is a sponsored post. The makers of Backup4All have donated $10 towards our hosting fees, in return for an unbiased review of their product on our website. Please note that while the post has been sponsored, our opinions are not, and we will voice our true opinion about the product, whether it be positive, negative, or both.
Backup4All is one choice among hundreds if you are looking for backup software for your computer. Check out this review as I walk though the interface and backups, and if you like it, try a trial copy at the bottom of the page.
First Impressions
When I first opened Backup4All, I noticed that it wasn’t the most attractive backup program I have seen, and it looked as if it had been based on an older version of windows. Also, the default window size was smaller than the actual button bar, so you could only see half the buttons until you manually resize it. After checking the options though, I found a setting to fix this. However it escapes me as to why this wasn’t automatically enabled.
I soon found out that you could create backup profiles in “groups” in the grey sidebar. Meaning you could have 20 separate backup profiles and not have to scroll by clicking back and forth between groups. Cool feature, but one that I probably wouldn’t use. I went through the options and was surprised by the flexibility that Backup4All offers the user. There are many options and settings that you can change to customize your backup to your liking. I then went to backup my files. Here are a couple good things I noticed:
Relatively quick backup - even a full backup only took a couple seconds and was as fast or faster than the standard windows copy.
Choose types of Backup - you can choose to perform a full backup, a differential (all data changes since last full backup) or incremental backup (all data changed since last full, differential, or incremental backup.)
Statistics- you can see at a glance when your last backup was, total backups, and other backup stats. You can also predict stats for the next backup, such as how many files will be transferred, how much extra space is needed, and more.
Backups include a profile file - just in case your computer crashes, Backup4All places a file with each backup that allows you to restore its settings into Backup4All. This is a nice feature that I haven’t seen in too many backup programs.
Along with these were a bunch of features that I didn’t like.
You can only backup to Zip - For some reason, you can only backup your files to a ZIP archive. I tried shuffling through the settings, but couldn’t figure out how to change this. This is pretty annoying, because I frequently navigate through my backups to restore only 1-2 files.
Requires Backup4All to restore - because of the complex structure of multiple zip files per backup (if you backup incrementally, you may have over 20 for a single profile!) you need Backup4All installed to recover your files. Again, this is very inconvenient because I enjoy being able to drag and drop my files back into their original destination. Also, you cannot navigate backups easily because they are split up into so many zip archives.
Bad Scheduler - the scheduler was nothing more than a button that opened up the default Windows Scheduler. It was hard to use, set up, and it didn’t apply well to the backup software. A custom scheduler such as the one found in most other backup programs would be nice.
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Original post here: Geoff R.
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