Features:
Easy to use interface
Backup and Restore Wizards that guides you through each procedure with clearly
defined instructions.
Disaster Recovery allowing you to restore your system from a boot disk (currently
not available under Windows XP).
Peer-to-peer network data protection
Unattended backups with flexible scheduling
Maximize media using significant compression
One button backup and restore
Perform full, partial or differential backups
System Requirements:
Pentium 166Mhz, Equivalent processor or better
Windows XP Home and Professional
Windows 2000 Workstation (up to SP2)
Windows ME
Windows NT 4 Workstation with SP4
Windows 98 SE
64MB RAM
50MB hard disk space
16 bit color, 800x600 or better
Mouse or other pointing device
Supported CD-Recordable or CD-Rewritable drive, tape drive or other backup
device. (Supported drive list available here.)
Introduction
There may be no phrase that can more quickly put a lump in a computer enthusiast's throat than "hard disk failure". Replacing processors, motherboards, and add-in cards may tighten one's wallet, but at least the install is reasonably quick and painless to the experienced user. Having to replace not only the hard disk, but any data that may have been lost due to the lack of a backup, presents a more painstaking chore.
In this day and age of cheap CD re-writeables (CD-RW) and even cheaper CD recordables (CD-R) it seems almost ludicrous not to have adequate backups of the data on one's PC. This is especially true if you're an overclocking enthusiast, and thus by definition, more likely to suffer a hardware failure and potentially loss of data.
Stomps BackUp MyPC
To keep the backup and restore process from being a major chore, the software must be up to the task in terms of flexibility and ease of use. The product we are looking at in this review, Stomp's BackUp MyPC (Formerly BackUp Exec Desktop by VERITAS) aims to fill that role.
Installation
Installation
Installation was a breeze. There is only a standard install and thus no worries about which options you really need installed. I noticed that Stomp has not yet removed all signs that this was once a Veritas product from some of the screens, including the initial splash screen upon inserting the CD. This may simply be due to how recently Stomp had purchased the product line from Veritas or they may be leaning a bit on the reputation of Veritas as an enterprise level application developer.
Initial Splash Screen
Stomp also includes Veritas StorageGuard v2.6 on the CD, however we will not be including that software as part of this review.
Product updates are available via the Stomp, Inc. web site. This review is based on version 4.71 which came on the CD.
After the install was complete and the machine had rebooted, it was now time to start up the application and see what it could do. I was pleasantly surprised that it did not ask me any information about my PC, my hard drives, or the backup device I intended on using despite the fact that I would be using an HP 8200 USB CDRW.
User Interface
The first screen that greets you upon starting Backup MyPC gives you the option of starting backup or restore wizards, opening blank backup or restore jobs, creating an automatic data protection job, or opening an existing backup job.
Wizards Menu
I opted to close out this screen for two reasons. One, I wanted to get a better look at the interface. Two, I'm not the biggest fan of application wizards. Call me a megalomaniac, but I prefer having complete control of what a given application job is doing down to the slightest detail.
Those of you who have worked with different backup applications in the business world will find the interface to be pretty familiar.
User Interface
I really liked the fact that just about anything you could need to set or change can be done with a minimal number of clicks from the initial interface screen. This adds to the ease of use of the application as you don't have to go click happy trying to set a preference. Options available included file compression in the backup, password protecting a backup, exclusion of certain file types, backup level (full, differential, incremental), depth of reporting, and whether to backup the registry.
Backup
Backup
I realize some of you may have blinked, if not stared in shock, when I mentioned that I would be using a USB CD writer for the purposes of this review. Why on earth would I use such a slow device (it burns CD-R's at a whopping 4x) when much faster devices are available. My reasoning was pretty simple, actually. Despite the fact that CD-R drives have really come down in price, I can't assume that everyone has a high end unit. Some of you out there probably have a first generation CD-R drive that you never saw a reason to upgrade and are probably curious if this is a viable solution for you. As for the rest of you, well, your backup and restore speeds should only improve upon what you see here.
To test the backup, I selected 50 MB worth of files from my C: drive to copy to a CD-R. It was during the selection process that I had two minor complaints with the software.
The first complaint is that it does not show you a running total of file numbers and sizes as you select the files and directories to backup. That information is available from the View pull down menu under Selection Information but should that really be necessary? I consider it something that should be remedied in a future version.
My second complaint has to do with the file selection window. As I had mentioned earlier, I think part of the ease of use of an application is at least partially determined by how much clicking a person has to do to complete a task in said application. Thus I was not thrilled to find that, at least when installed on Windows 2000 SP2, the My Documents folder does not appear as available when looking through things on the desktop to select for backup. To backup My Documents, I had to go through the file menu to find the appropriate directory. Considering this is the default location to which many apps save their files, I would have thought the ability to locate My Documents by selecting Desktop would be a no-brainer. I don't know if this holds true for Windows 9x/ME so your mileage may vary.
That said, I was happy with the speed at which Backup MyPC backed up my files given the hardware it used. It took 3 minutes for Backup MyPC to backup and verify 48 files of varying sizes totalling 53 MB. Assuming for a moment that the backup time would increase in a relatively linear fashion with the total backup size, it comes out to about an hour to backup 1 GB of data. That's not too shabby for a CD-R writer copying at 4x.
Restore Issue / Conclusion (for now)
Restore Issues
I hit a couple of show stopper issues during the restore portion of our testing. After having selected the files to restore via the Media View function, I chose an alternate location for restoration of the files locally on the hard disk. The software began the process of restoring the files from the CDRW backup I had made and all looked to be moving along beautifully. It was just as the last of the files appeared to have been restored that the problem hit, the test machine got a nice and shiny blue screen of death.
Upon rebooting, I ran a scandisk and a defragmentation of the hard disk and then attempted the restore again. The blue screen of death appeared again. I rebooted and ran scandisk once more and decided it was time to check the Stomp web site for an update. Having found one to update the version from 4.71 to 4.85, I downloaded the update and began the installation. The installation verified that I did have a previous version installed and informed me that it would need to uninstall it prior to installing the latest version. Clicked on Yes to have it perform the uninstall and ran into the second show stopper, the uninstall crashed with an internal error and was unable to proceed.
I closed out the process and went into Control Panel/Add or Remove Programs and attempted the uninstall then and received the same result. Now I found myself stuck with an application that not only crashed my system but could not be removed.
I sent a message to my contact at Stomp about the issues I was having with both updating Backup MyPC as well as the Blue Screen upon restore. The recommendations made by Stomp technical support regarding the inability to uninstall/update the app were of no use. The first recommendation was that the application needed to be install with Local Administrator rights in order to work properly. The account used did indeed have Local Administrator rights, furthermore, I pointed out that there was nothing in the documentation that even noted this necessity. While my background in the I.T. industry led me to login as a Local Admin from past experience, this product is aimed at the every day user who may not be as savvy.
The second recommendation was to use an uninstaller application that they had me download called Windows Install Clean Up. Problem was that the software was packaged via InstallShield and thus was not even recognized in the utility.
On the blue screen issue side, it was suggested that I update the drivers and firmware for the CDRW drive if available. One set of updates later, I still had no joy. At that point, I re-installed Win2K Service Pack 2 and re-tried both the update process and restore process, still no luck. I updated the PC to Service Pack 3 and re-tried once again and still no luck.
I flirted with the idea at this point that the BSOD may be due to a bad CD so I tried it at home on an Athlon system running Windows 98 SE. Wouldn't you know it, the installation, update process, and restore all worked like a charm. This left me with something of a quandry in that it worked as advertised on one platform but not on another even though the platform it did not work on did meet all of the software's requirements.
Conclusion (for now)
Because of the nature of the issues I am seeing, I find it hard to endorse this software for others to use until I can get a better explanation of why I was not able to update or uninstall the software in Windows 2000 despite the fact that the account used for the install had local administrator priveleges as well as why the software continues to generate a blue screen of death upon a restore on a machine that has never given me any problems with other applications.
I look forward to hearing from Stomp, Inc. on this matter, and we will naturally post an update of this review as new developments arise.
Robert Kropiewnicki