Russ Aaronson May 1, 2003

When bad things happen to good people’s hard drives at my workplace, those good people come to me first. Before I grab my CD wallet full of disk utilities, before I drag their laptops home with me, and even before I ask them for an account of what tragedy befell their systems, I always pose the same question.

I won’t type the question here, because you know what this review is about. And I also know how annoying “the question” can be, because I don’t usually do “it” either. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked to resurrect a disk for a person who does “it” anyway.

We really don’t have any excuse. Compared to most system utilities, backup software is relatively cheap, especially when you consider how much time, work, and angst you can save yourself. With CD burners nearly ubiquitous, and blank CD’s incredibly inexpensive, there’s really no hardware issue here. Heck, even burning your documents folder to a CD every once in a while is better than nothing at all.

So why do so few of us do it? The answer boils down to the software itself.

If you don’t have backup software, securing alternate copies of your data can be tedious at best, and worthless if done improperly. Now that new Macs ship with several hundred megabytes of data before you type a single email or install a program, backing up requires a large amount of storage. Then comes the issue of what to backup. Documents are a no-brainer (or maybe not, as we’ll see later), but what about applications? If you just drag an application to a blank CD, then drag that file back to a newly restored drive, will the application work? The answer, as always, is a definite maybe (especially when you start talking about serial/registration/validation numbers for your applications, which could easily be orphaned in the move). With the advent of X, backing up has been further complicated by the presence of Unix and its multi-user underpinnings. Dorothy, you’re not in Classic anymore.

Assuming you get any of this figured out, not owning backup software still leaves the job up to you. If you want your Mac to take care of things for you, there are surprisingly few available options. Freeware like SilverKeeper sports some interesting features, but limitations in terms of storage media and scheduling will leave you spouting that old adage about getting what you pay for. Apple’s own .Mac Backup is hardly much better, and you’ll need to shell out a hundred clams for the entire service to get this marginally useful perk.

Failing these options, you’re looking at spending at least fifty dollars for a software package with enough features to justify a purchase. This leaves you in the unenviable position of having fifty or sixty bucks to spend, and deciding to use it on what is easily one of the most boring purchases you’ll ever make in your life. Just picture this conversation:

Bob: Hey, Al. What did you do with that fifty dollar bill you found at Starbucks on Friday?

Al: Well, Bob, I purchased backup software, then spent some time configuring a logical, but time-wise data recovery plan.

Bob: zzzzzzzzzzz

Here’s a very short list of purchases that might not have put Bob to sleep:

1. Day rental of a Sea Kayak.
2. The first season of Twin Peaks on DVD.
3. Dinner for two at El Mariachi.
4. Halo for the Mac.

Okay, so that last one’s just a fantasy, but any of these things could be more interesting uses for your little green picture of Ulysses S. Grant. Of course anything is probably better than this exchange:

Bob: Hey, Al. What did you do this weekend?

Al: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Bob: Al, are you okay.

Joe: His hard drive died, and he just spent the entire weekend trying to reconstruct that portfolio he’s been assembling for the past month.

Bob: Ouch! Well, I’m going out for a Venti Frappaccino.

Joe: Wow! I guess you found fifty bucks on Friday too.

Pardon the tangent, but you get the picture. If you fear the second conversation more than the first, read on to learn about a product that makes backing up your Mac as good as it gets.

Data Backup Basics

Though you can find Data Backup X at your local Mac retailer, I’d skip the trip and just download it from Prosoft. The download is small (even for us bandwidth impaired 56K folks), and they’ll send you a serial number along with the program. Installation is a snap, and once the program launches you’ll see this:

This window left me with mixed emotions. At first, I was relieved to see that Data Backup would not be a difficult program to learn. Then I couldn’t help thinking “This is fifty bucks worth of software?”

Don’t be deceived, my friends. All you have to do is click that little arrow next to the words “Advanced Actions” and you’ll see where your Frappaccino cash went.

Data Backup Actions

Data Backup breaks the process of backing up your data into three kinds of actions, and it allows three different backup modes for any of the three actions. We’ll look at the actions first.

Immediate actions pretty much do what you (or SilverKeeper, or .Mac Backup) can do for free. You choose a folder or a volume, and DB lives up to its name. If you’ve already made a backup, DB will restore it with a click of the big red button, exactly the way it was before. However, there is one big advantage to using DB – you can create (or restore) an exact, bootable copy of your Mac’s trusty startup volume. This wasn’t a big deal in the days of Classic, when you just dragged the icon of your system folder to another drive and let your Mac do the rest. Things are different now: in order to hide that Unix-powered system in the depths of Aqua, Apple decided to make many critical files invisible. Combine this with the sticky matter of permissions, and you have a backup situation just complicated enough to reinvigorate the Mac backup software market.

What’s that? Do I hear a heckler deep in the smoky darkness of the audience screaming “What about Carbon Copy Cloner? It’s free, and it works great!” Well, I agree, but we’re talking integration here. Data Backup made a fine, bootable disk, and a verbatim copy of my startup volume without fail. If you already have backup software and you’re looking for volume copying, don’t miss CCC. Otherwise, keep reading.

When you start using DB's Advanced Immediate Actions, you’ll begin to realize just how powerful this little program is. Not only can you copy a folder or volume, but this level allows you to keep any folder or volume synced to a backup volume. Again, you’ll see this in other backup programs, but you’ll either get less functionality with less cost, or a less elegant interface for a bigger price tag. Tack on the ability to compress the data and you have the true killer feature. Even in these times of humongous hard drives, I’m still a space miser, and that’s why I love this feature. If you do decide to use compression, remember that you’ll need DB to uncompress and restore the data (as opposed to any other backup, which can simply be transferred or launched from the backup volume in the Finder).

Programmable Actions do pretty much what you think they would, but this is a true star of Data Backup because you can customize a programmed backup in virtually any imaginable way. You say you want DB to backup everything in your Documents folder except your “Personal Confessions” folder? No problem! Your storage media lacks enough space to make a copy of your Yu-Gi-Oh! card database every week? Tell Data Backup to ignore any file over a Gig, then assign the database to a different programmed action. Personally, I don’t see myself using these features too often, but I know there are plenty of compulsive’s out there who are drooling just reading these words. If this means you (and you know who you are), grab your credit card and download this puppy now!

Data Backup Modes

Once you’ve decided on how to implement actions, you can employ any, or all of the Data Backup modes to suit your purposes. The mirror backup is delightfully self-explanatory, and it’s the kind of feature you’ll find in pretty much any backup package.

In addition to being an abomination of our mother tongue, the “evolutive” backup not only mirrors the original data, but it keeps track of files that were changed in any way and saves the latest version of the modified file. You decide how many versions DB saves, and you decide when old versions get deleted. This is a boon to the creative professional, but you’ll probably need a dedicated, mirrored drive if you want to go this deep.

For the truly paranoid, there’s always the incremental backup, which will keep every saved version of every file you designate. Again, I just can’t see myself using this particular feature, but it’s your data.

Performance

I could quibble about things being a little slow here, or a little unclear there, but everything worked as advertised, and with very little fuss overall. There’s no paper manual, but this seems like the kind of program that’s well suited to the paperless PDF trend that’s all the rage these days. Once you get things set up, it’s unlikely that you’ll look at the manual many more times, so why waste the paper? For what it’s worth, the manual is written with about as much punch as you can possibly expect to find for such a mundane topic.

The Verdict

So what’s not to like here?

The price. I doubt I’ll ever spend fifty dollars on backup software, and even those folks at my job who have suffered near catastrophic data loss aren’t likely to shell out the cash either. After the money’s spent and the program’s installed, there’s still plenty of work on the user’s part (unlike extended warranties or oil changes, which let you go on with your life while somebody else does the dirty work). If the Prosoft marketing team would consider a “lite” version (perhaps without the evolutive and incremental backups, or with more limited programmable features) for a lighter price, they might lure the penny-wise/pound-foolish users like me. Then again, doing so could rob Data Backup of everything that sets itself apart from the crowd.

As it stands, Data Backup gives you the best stuff for the lowest price in its category. In fact, we could all use some better habits with our data, even at a price that’s tough to swallow. I don’t exactly see Mac Halo going gold master anytime soon, do you?

Product	Data Backup X
Company	Prosoft Engineering
MSRP	$49 (Same price for Data Backup Classic for OS 8.6-9.x)
Hits	Options for synced and compressed backups. Highly flexible programmable backups. Evolutive and Incremental Backups. Easy to use. Cheaper than Retrospect Personal.
Misses	Still pricey for personal backup software.
Rating	(5 possible)
Requirements	Any Mac capable of running OS X v. 10.1.5 and up. (Prosoft also offers Data Backup Classic for users of OS 8.6-9.x)
Tested On	PowerBook G4/867MHz, 256mb RAM, 40 Gig HD

Russ Aaronson

English Teacher, Pompano Beach, FL