One Tip A Day » Backup

Backup Platinum: Insurance For Your PC

Tony Williams — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:11:45 +0000

I don’t have a backup routine for my PC, which is bad, really bad. Even though it’s very unlikely that my apartment will burn down, there are no guarantees that my hard drive won’t fail or that I won’t do something silly like spilling a cup of coffee down my machine or deleting a vital file.

There are many backup programs out there, and Backup Platinum have asked me to review theirs in a sponsored review. Backup Platinum costs $67 for a single PC licence which I feel is a bit on the pricey side, but in return you get a backup program that can make a copy of your data to an external drive or other media, or to a FTP server or LAN if you have one available.

Backup Platinum works with all Windows OSs beyond Windows 95 and a 30 day free trial version is available, which is what I used for testing. The client is under 5MB, and while it was downloading I checked out the online help section which was fairly clear and set out well. The instructions were laid out with clear instructions on how to choose which folders and files to backup, and then how to choose which location to back the files up to. One very nice feature is the ability to add MS outlooks and Outlook Express files, which is handy as not many users know which files to backup if they want to protect their emails.

There’s even a scheduler function that allows you to automatically back up files. Control over whether multiple versions of files or just the latest version is also available. This is a very handy feature and isn’t always available with backup software, as it allows you to restore older versions of files that might not have certain errors included.

What the service really does lack in my view is an online backup service. Unless you drive your backed up discs to a neighbours every night, then backing up to an external drive won’t protect you from theft, fire, flood etc. I know this may seem like overkill, but just imagine losing those irreplaceable holiday or wedding snaps…..

All in all, Backup Platinum seems to be a respectable backup program with some nifty features, but at $67 it just seems too pricey to me.

Backup Firefox Bookmarks, Extensions, Settings – Everything!

Tony Williams — Wed, 09 May 2007 22:04:43 +0000

FEBE Firefox extension is a great Firefox extension that can be used to back up your Firefox settings, or to transfer your settings to a new PC.

Not only does it backup your extensions, but it backs up your complete profile i.e. bookmarks, cookies, passwords – everything. It even backs up the settings you’ve added to each of your extensions.

Thanks to Listikal for the tip.

How To Backup DVDs

Tony Williams — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 23:19:46 +0000

Backing up DVDs can be vital. I’ve started backing up vital software where I don’t want to risk scratching the originals.

gHacks has put together a list of free software that will help you make copies and get around DRM issues. I tend to use Rip it 4 Me, which is a frontend for DVD Decrypter or DVD Shrink which adds ways to those programs to backup a DVD even when it is copy protected. You do need one of the two mentioned programs to be able to use Rip it 4 Me.

Martin also recommends installing FixVTS which allows you to adjust your DVD files into better DVD compliance.

More: gHacks