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Top 5 ZIP And Unzip softwares

Mon, 5 Aug 2008 05:08:09 GMT

posted by thetechpedia

What is Zip?

A Zip file is sometimes called an “archive” file. The ZIP file format is a data compression and archival format. A ZIP file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce their file size, or stored as-is.

Below is the fantastic list of the very best 5 ZIP And Unzip software programs.

WinZip: Award winning easy-to-use, powerful tool that quickly zips and unzips your files to conserve disk space & reduce email transmission time. Features: predefined data backup jobs, create automated zipping jobs, ftp upload functionality, zip and burn to cd or dvd, explorer style view, create self extracting archives, command line support and more. Standard and Pro versions available. For Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP.

WinRAR: Powerful archiver and archive manager. RAR files can usually compress content 8 to 30 percent more than ZIP or ARJ files. Features strong compression, processing of non-RAR archives, long filename support, self-extracting archives and more. For Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP.

PowerZip: Easily create and extract zip files. PowerZip offers built-in support for ZIP, CAB, ACE, RAR, JAR, TAR, GZ and Z files. ARJ, LZH and HA files are supported via corresponding external programs. Includes a flexible self-extractor so you can send archives to users who might not have a Zip program. Advanced features include multi-disk spanning, comments, encryption, storing and restoring of directory structures and wildcard support. For Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP.

StuffIt Expander: Opens both StuffIt and Zip compressed files, the two most common files on the Web. Provides quick and easy file access, regardless of whether it was created on a PC or Mac. Will expand all of these formats: StuffIt (.sit), Zip (.zip), gzip (.gz), ARC (.arc), Arj (.arj), uuencode (.uue), BinHex (.hqx), MacBinary (.bin), MIME/Base64, and self-extracting StuffIt (.sea), Zip, and Arj archives. Freeware. For Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, MAC, Linux.

CAM UnZip: Powerfull tool for Creating and Extracting Zip Files. Command line interface.Optionally run setup automatically after unzipping.For Windows XP.

Get Free BitDefender AntiVirus 2008 License Key Lots of Anti virus softwares are coming into market nowadays because it is now becoming essent...
Get the latest Filezilla Portable 3.0.11.1 Webmasters can easily transfer their files to their website using the ftp server address provide...
QWinApt:Package Manager for Windows Ubuntu provides you package manager for managing, installing and uninstalling your software. It ...
Some of the best free windows softwares
FormatFactory:Convert your videos for free.

R-Studio 4.5 Build 127464

Thu, 18 Jul 2008 18:31:00 GMT

posted by finoddl

R-Studio is a family of powerful and cost-effective undelete and data recovery software. Empowered by the new unique data recovery technologies, it is the most comprehensive data recovery solution for recovery files from FAT12/16/32, NTFS, NTFS5 (created or updated by Windows 2000/XP/2003), Ext2FS/Ext3FS (LINUX file systems) and UFS1/UFS2 (FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD file systems) partitions. It functions on local and network disks, even if such partitions are formatted, damaged or deleted. Flexible parameter settings give you absolute control over data recovery.

R-Studio Data Recovery Features :
- Standard "Windows Explorer" - style interface.
- Host OS: Windows 9x, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 Server, Vista.
- Data recovery over the Network. Files can be recovered on network computers running Win95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista, Macintosh, Linux and UNIX.
- Supported file systems: FAT12, FAT16, FAT32,NTFS, NTFS5 (created or updated by Win2000/XP/2003/Vista), HFS/HFS+ (Macintosh), Little and Big Endian variants of UFS1/UFS2 (FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/Solaris) and Ext2FS/Ext3FS (Linux).
- Recognition and parsing Dynamic (Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista), Basic(MBR) and BSD (UNIX) partitions layout schema and Apple partition map. Dynamic partitions over GPT are supported as well as dynamic partitions over MBR.
- Damaged RAID recovery. If OS cannot recognize your RAID, you can create a virtual RAID from its components. Such virtual RAID can be processed like a real one.
- Creates IMAGE FILES for an entire Hard Disk, Partition or its part. Such image files can be compressed and split into several files to put it on CD/DVD/Flash or FAT16/FAT32. Then the image files can be processed like regular disks.
Data recovery on damaged or deleted partitions, encrypted files (NTFS 5), alternative data streams (NTFS, NTFS 5).
- Recovering data if:
* FDISK or other disk utilities have been run;
* VIRUS has invaded; FAT is damaged; MBR is destroyed.
- Recognizes localized names.
- Recovered files can be saved on any (including network) disks accessible by the host operating system.
- File or disk content can be viewed and edited with the advanced hexadecimal editor. The editor supports NTFS file attribute editing.

New R-Studio features in version 4.0:
# HFS and HFS+ file systems support. In addition to FAT/NTFS/ExtFS2/ExtFS3/UFS1/UFS2 R-Studio supports HFS and HFS+ file systems developed by Apple Computer for use on computers running Mac OS.
* R-Studio can not be installed under Mac OS, but a hard drive with HFS and/or HFS+ partitions can be attached to Windows machine and processed by R-Studio.
# Apple Computers support. New R-Studio Emergency version can be run from CD on Intel-based Macintosh computers.
# Big Endian variant of UFS support.
# GPT partition layout schema support. This schema is used in 64-bit Windows OS.
# APM support. Apple Partition Map (APM) is a partition scheme used to define the low-level organization of data on disks formatted for use with Macintosh computers.
# R-Studio Technician Portable was added to R-Studio Technician package. The portable version can be run from a USB storage device.
# Compressed image format support. When R-Studio creates an image of the disk or its part, the image can be compressed and split into several files to put it on CD/DVD/Flash Drive or FAT16/FAT32.
* R-Studio reads and opens the created image only for the purpose of data recovery. For disk imaging and restoration tasks please consider R-Drive Image software.

Size : 6 MB

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Romeo Burner 2.0

Mon, 11 Dec 2007 17:27:00 GMT

posted by Swan
Good morning readers!

Burning CDs/DVDs in the 21st century has become not only big business, but it's also put what was once only the domain of paid professionals into the hands of the layman.

These days, just about anyone who is prepared to read help files, is able to choose and use the plethora of CD/DVD burning programs on the internet to achieve their desired outcome.

Today, we're going to examine Romeo Burner 2.0 which is created by the same people who put out the excellent program Sticky Password, which I've also revie wed here.

Developer: Romeo Development Group

Supported Languages: English (support planned for other languages in the future.)

System Requirements: Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista.

Additional Requirements: None.

Tested on: Windows XP Pro.

The people at Romeo, tell us that their latest release of the product, is terrific for "recording, ripping, mastering and editing of CD, DVD, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs." That's a whole lot of functionality for the home user.

While I could work it out, less experienced people might have been confused by the first option given to us during installation of the program. I've included a screen shot here, but basically it says: "Allow to use Romeo for users without administrative rights."

The person who wrote the dialog is assuming that the person installing the software is the administrator of the machine where it's being installed, which makes one wonder if the software can even be installed by a non-administrative person.

With children in the house that think they can already do everything on the computer ;) I installed it strictly with administrative rights, meaning that no-one else in the house is able to burn CDs with this software. I found this to be a very nice (protective,) feature of the software.

GUI (Graphical user interface:)

I was completely thrown when I looked for a GUI and didn't find one! The installation places an icon on your desk, called Romeo Projects. Clicking on this, launches what looks like a normal folder, but with the Romeo logo in the bottom right corner.

The folder contains two links; one called New Project and the other one called Disc Images. (Note to developer: 'Disc' should be 'Disk' for American release.)

New Project:

To begin, the user clicks on New Project, which brings up the dialog to the right. You're asked for a both a project name and a project type. You can choose from three types: Data; Audio and CD Extra Project, which apparently is Romeo's way of identifying CDs that contain both audio and data.

I was surprised that there wasn't an option for creating video projects, given that this is DVD burning software! Data projects also have two types: Link to Files and Direct Files Copy. The dialog says that, if you choose Link to Files; all files adding to the project, will be linked to the source files and if you choose Direct files copy, all files added to the project will be copied to the project.

However, it's not clear why you'd choose one over the other, though I'm guessing the link option would save space on your hard drive.

Because I chose Link to Files when I set up the first project, I noticed that the Romeo Folder now had three icons, the last representing the new project I'd created.

Disc Images:

This was the second icon already in the Romeo folder after installation. Clicking on this, revealed another icon, called; New Group. I had no idea what this actually meant.

When I clicked on it I got another dialog, which asks for a Group Name and has a checkbox labeled; Open group after creation.

But there's no explanation for what a 'group' is, or why I'd create a new one. Not seeing any kind of help available, I checked back to the installation folder where a help file was stored.

It would have been nice if you could access the help file immediately from the folder, so I created a short cut for the help file and tried to place it in the Romeo folder with the other two icons. For some reason it just refused to let me do this, which annoyed me to no end.

Groups are a way of collectively storing certain projects; so you can have a group for disk images and another for something else - it's all up to you. (See first image in review.)

When you create a new project, you see an almost normal Explorer window which has a couple of new icons on the toolbar: Burn and Additional actions. The latter is a drop down box that gives you the choice to: Erase disc; Copy disc; Burn video disc; Burn disc image; Grab Audio disc; Grab disc image; and Create disc image. The same options are there for Audio and Data projects.

The burn button, brings up the appropriate dialog for Audio or Data CDs. The dialogs have all the options I ever use. Data CDs & DVDs can be made bootable. There's even a ruler bar at the top that tells you how much data your project has in it.

With no disk in my burner, the ruler topped out at 702Mb (which should be MB or MiB...Mb is Mega-bits, which is incorrect.)

When I inserted a DVD, the ruler changed to top out at 4.38Gb [sic.] For Audio CDs, most of the options I would normally use are available; however, there were a couple functions missing:

There's no setting to control the gap between tracks on the CD and there's no way to write in Disc at Once mode. There is a dropdown box for Write mode, but it only contains one option; Track at Once. It's not even worth being a drop down box.

The most noticeable item missing that appears in other similar software burn dialogs, is the ability to write a disk image to my hard drive. The Create Disc Image option partially fulfills this role, however there doesn't appear to be any way to create an image of an audio disk.

Also, it doesn't seem that you can choose between multi-session and non-multi-session disks when creating an image. You can, however, create a bootable disk image. All in all, it would have been better had Romeo followed the convention of other disk burner software and just provided a way to select a virtual CD/DVD burner as the output device and dispensed with the Create disc image tool altogether.

Options:

Erase disc contains the options you'd expect. Unfortunately, I don't have any erasable disks, so I couldn't test it.

Copy disc does about what you'd expect. Again, it would be nice to be able to use this to copy to a disk image, but Romeo does do the same thing with the Grab disc image option.

Burn disc image lets you copy a disk image from your hard drive to a physical CD or DVD. Three formats are supported: ISO, NRG (Nero's proprietary format) and MDS (Alcohol's proprietary format.) Surprisingly, the widely supported BIN/CUE format is not supported by Romeo.

Grab audio disc is a CD ripper. You can rip CDs to MP3 (with the LAME encoder) or to WMA. You can also rip the uncompressed audio to WAV files. When MP3 or WMA are chosen, you can select the bitrate, but there's no option to select a variable bitrate. There's also no indication of whether ripping to WMA will add Microsoft's DRM (Digital Rights Management,) to your ripped files or not.

As mentioned above, the Grab disc image option lets you copy a CD or DVD to an image file. This option supports ISO and MDS formats. These are fairly adequate.

As I said earlier, the Create disc image option lets you write your CD or DVD project to a disk image. But this is only for data disks. There's no support for creating images from audio projects.

Burn video disc lets you create a video CD or DVD. Video CD (VCD), Super Video CD (SVCD), and Digital Video Disk (DVD) formats are supported. Unfortunately, this feature is very sparse. There's no way to create menus or chapters or any of the features one normally finds on video disks. You can simply copy some video to a disk.

Help File:

I found the help file for Romeo Burner to be excellent. It contained many screen shots, with explanations that would teach the novice how to use the software easily.

My only negative comment is that the grammar really needs reworking and that it lacks a bookmarking feature found in most other help files. If I think I'm going to forget something, this is a feature that I use all the time in other help files.

Features:

All the "Additional Actions" are available as individual programs in the Romeo Start Menu folder. So you can simply navigate to the Romeo folder in your Program Files and see them all listed there. This is a nice feature;

The integration into the Windows context menu is always appreciated by users;

Built-in media player for preview audio;

Built-in MP3 Tag editor;

CDDB support;

Able to use Romeo Burner via command line. I've found that many tech., types prefer to work this way - frankly I was happy to leave a DOS interface behind, when Windows came out with the first version of their OS. ;)

Negatives:

Help file should be immediately available from the Romeo folder where you're working;

No ability to choose between a multi-session and non-multi-session disk when creating an image;

While 'disc' is the correct spelling in Europe and Australia, it is not here in the United States. (Americans have bastardized the English language anyway! ;) All instances of this needs to be changed to 'disk.'

Software should be able to include the BIN/CUE format when burning a disk image;

Software should include support for creating images from audio projects;

Software should include the ability to add menus and chapters when burning video disks.

Serious Errors:

When I tried to burn some video to a disk, I got an incomprehensible error, with no indication of how to correct it:

'Error :: StarBurn_DVDVideo_Create() failed, exception 5, status 2, text "CStarBurn_ScsiTransportSPTI::ExecuteCDB(): Command failed'.

My husband who has been a professional software developer for the past 25 years or more, looked on and said, "No end user should ever see an error like that.The error dialog helpfully offered to send the error to Romeo for me. However when I clicked that button, I got another error dialog:

Unable to send e-mail to: support@romeoburner.com. Reason: Invalid pointer operation.

Apparently their Send Error function is not fully debugged as yet.

When I tried to burn an audio CD on a non-blank CD-R, Romeo did offer to erase the disk for me. But when I accepted the offer, I got yet another incomprehensible error:

ERROR :: StarBurn_CdvdBurnerGrabber_Blank() failed, exception 8, status 31, text "CStarBurn_ScsiTransportSPTI::ExecuteCDB(): Command failed"'

Points:

Originality: 6/10
Functionality: 7/10
Intuitiveness: 6/10

Price: USD$19.99 (one license.)

When Romeo Burner has all its problems fixed, the price will be worthy of the softwares functionality.

Summary:

As a very simple data and audio CD burner, Romeo is adequate. There are lots of other more fully featured programs out there, but Romeo has a nice clean (when no errors are present) user interface.

The error handling needs a lot of work. Users should never see the kinds of error messages I quoted above. Those messages are useful to the developer to see what went wrong, but that's all.

I couldn't get the Video CD/DVD burner working at all. Even if I had, unfortunately it's just barely adequate, though perhaps good enough for a beginner who just wants to put some video on a DVD.

The lack of ability to create menus and chapters is, perhaps, ok for beginners, but even beginners will soon want to step up to something better.

Recommendation:

While there are still some teething problems with Romeo Burner 2.0, I do have hope that it will improve with future releases. This was a commissioned review, and the person I spoke with knows that I don't pull any punches with my testing and subsequent reviews of software.

This shows me that the people at Romeo Burner Development Group are serious about it's current abilities, what the software lacks and how it can be improved.

At the moment, I'm unable to recommend Romeo Burner to you, but I do suggest that you keep an eye on their web site for the next version, which I'm sure will address all the issues mentioned here.
~ Buy your Christmas Gifts at Software by Swan ~ ---->>>

I'd also like to thank Aleksandr at Romeo Development Group for commissioning this review.

If you enjoy my reviews, please rate my article at the top of the page - ratings are always appreciated and help me to improve this web site for you. Not to mention that it improves your own karma!

Enjoy the rest of your day!
~ Swan

All Content is Copyright © premreviews.blogspot.com
All Rights Reserved.
Developers, Software Houses and Web Designers:

Please contact Swan if you'd like to purchase a candid, constructive review, under privately agreed terms, of your software; games; or web site design.

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Ahhh Agloco!

“The day will come when machines and software will tell us whom to know; what to eat; what to wear; when to go to work and what profession to pursue; when to sleep; what entertainments to enjoy and with whom to have any kind of relationship. It can’t be avoided and you will succumb.”
~ Swan (2005)

East-Tec Backup 2007

Sun, 12 Nov 2007 21:09:00 GMT

posted by Swan

Originally posted - September 19th, 2007

Premier Software Reviews is an active blog, being recreated from my
Swan Reviews (Almost!) Everything web site. Once recreated
(just a couple of days now,) ~ Swan will be providing fresh
reviews three or four times per week as usual.
Please adjust your bookmarks.

Good morning readers!

These days, one would hope that any user has come to realize the importance of backing up their files. It's a security measure that no-one can afford to be without - it also brings peace of mind to the person who has important and/or sensitive files to protect from being lost - especially ones that the user considers to be irreplaceable.

Developer: East Technologies

Supported Languages: English.

System Requirements: Windows Vista/XP/2000/Me/NT/'98/Windows Server 2003.

Additional Requirements: 300 MHz or higher processor; 128 MB of RAM; 10 MB of hard disk space

Tested on: Windows XP Pro.
All back-up programs of which I'm aware, have the ability to set restore points, giving the user the ability to return to that point if something untoward should happen on the user's computer, such as file corruption; accidental file deletion and other unknown issues.

In general, back-ups should also have the ability to protect the user's program settings; registry files and any other files that are important to you - so let's see how well East-Tec Backup performs.

GUI (graphical user interface:)

As the program launches, a visually pleasing interface appears (first image,) giving you the options of: Backup; My tasks; Restore and Quick Tour.

Functions seem easy for the inexperienced user, by the use of wizards.

Upon launch, an icon immediately appeared in the tray, enabling right-click to access much of the program.

Options:

Clicking on options first, the user is presented with four types: General Settings; Email Settings; FTP connections; Masks and Logs.

Going through each one, I could see that the software was extremely configurable and changed certain options to suit my own tastes, thereby ensuring that I knew the program would run and perform as I wished it to run. Too many people blame software for not performing as expected, only to find that they didn't have the options configured correctly, for their own expected result.

General Options:

Here you decide whether or not you want the program to:

Launch with start-up;
Associate all task files with East-Tec Backup;
Delay launching for n minutes after start-up.

You can also decide:

Where you want your temporary files stored;
What you'd prefer the task priority to be.

Settings:

This is where you enter your:

Outgoing SMTP server and port;

SMTP server login and password;

The rest are defaults, which allows the program to email you about any events, including issues. (See features below.)

You then send a test email, just to ensure that you have your settings correct.

FTP Connections:

As the subtitle implies, this is where you enter your FTP connection details. Once done, you will be able to quickly load them again when creating new tasks to a remote location. Nice and handy indeed.

Masks:

For those new to such terminologies; think of it as a mask you might wear to a party - it hides your face .. right? Well this works in the same way. Entering certain file extensions (as filename masks,) that you don't want included in the back-up process; will cause the program to ignore any files with the same extensions. There's absolutely no point in backing up files that you don't particularly want to keep, such as temp., files.

Logs:

This is the last option and allows you to enter a file path where you'd like the program logs to be stored; whether or not you want them timestamped and finally, to what size you'd like to limit the log file sizes.

Quick Tour:

I took the Quick Tour, which is conveniently located within the help file. This shows users how to manage their own back-up tasks (run; edit; view; add files and identify status;) restore points from previous back-ups; and create syncronization tasks.

As with many back-up utilities, you're able to set automatic back-ups and schedule certain other tasks that you want to run regularly. This gives the user peace of mind - although with my current back-ups, I still check the results every now and then, to ensure that the program is still working well and hasn't experienced any issues, preventing it from working as it should.

No-one should blindly trust any software, without checking it from time to time, to ensure it's ongoing integrity.

If you back up to CDs/DVDs, it's a general recommendation that they are stored off-site - that means, other than your home. If you were to have a fire - there would go all your data; settings and anything else that you specifically care about on your computer. Just think how devastated you'd be, if you lost all your financial information! What would you do at tax time?

Somehow, you'd have to attempt to recreate all the information you had in there, once you reinstalled your tax program. This was just an example - but I wanted to show you how extreme, losing your data can be.

Other dire losses, could be:

Loss of your password manager;
Project information;
Powerpoint presentations;
Cooking database;
All your music/photo/scrapbooking files;
All your music/graphic converters; just to name a few!

Chat logs (some people love to keep these;)

I listed these because I know that people who don't think they need to back-up - often don't see the big picture, or scope of what can be lost.

Help File:

Very comprehensive; layed out well and very easy to understand. Even the absolute novice could navigate their way to finding the information they seek.

Features:

According to the documentation, once you set up your email information, the program will automatically notify you of errors; warnings and summaries of the executed task. I'll be testing this later. My current back-up program doesn't have this ability, so in my opinion, that's a real plus for East-Tec;

Not only does it back-up important files; photographs; and music - but it will also back-up your emails; address book and program settings. Not bad at all. Not that you have to back-up ALL your programs and settings, just the ones that truly matter to you;

The encryption algorithim used, is military strength - 256 bit AES. It's not likely that any hacker would be able to break this code if you happen to have a breach of security on your computer. If they can, our military is in deep ...... trouble;

You're able to back-up to any media: hard disks; CDs/DVDs; USB sticks; network, or to chosen internet locations. However, I do discourage the latter. Backing up to a file storage facility on the internet, while handy, can be disastrous for the user. It's not unknown for such companies to go under and not notify their members. If this were to happen to you, you'd be left with no back-up files whatsoever;

If you choose to back-up to a USB stick, be careful there also. Loss of the USB stick, would constitute the same dangers as storing online. Personally, I wouldn't choose either of these methods - well perhaps the latter if I was planning on immediately going over to a friend or relative, to store the back-up with them;

You're also able to automatically compress your files after the backup is finished. Unfortunately the compression method used in East-Tec Backup is the zip format - which restricts you to 4 Gig;

The restore function is excellent and worked exactly as expected;

Back up without the need to close running programs;

Run programs/commands before or after the backup.

Negatives:

I didn't see any mention on their website, or in their documentation, as to whether or not the program would back up to tape;

After I configured my first task (full backup,) I saw that I had 16 Gig to back-up and wondered what would happen if I chose compression, knowing that the program uses .zip. My current back-up program, has the ability to split the backup over two or three zip files.

Result:

The bad news is: that it came up with an error and stopped the entire process. More bad news is: that even though my earlier test email had worked perfectly, the program didn't notify me that the back-up hadn't worked. After double checking my options, there's no reason that I could see, why this didn't happen.

The worrisome thing about this, is that should you somehow miss the fact that the program hadn't done its thing - it could go without any intervention and you'd be thinking that your files and programs are all safe - when they're not. If you use this program, you must remember the 4 Gig limit on compression and somehow work around it.

Two ways to accomplish this, are to either:

Reduce the number of files and programs you want to back-up (disappointing;)
Manually split your back-ups between two tasks.

This sounds like a lot of tedious, unnecessary work, when a few other backup programs can quite adequately handle this issue by choosing different methods for compression. Having said this, you need to remember that if your hard drive uses FAT32 formatting, you'd still be limited to creating files larger than 4 Gig, regardless of whether or not the compression utility is supposed to be able to create larger files. This is a limitation of Windows. Unfortunately, this size isn't even nearly adequate for the business environment of today.

This does not make East-Tec Backup 2007 itself unworthy, it was just an unfortunate choice of compression method to include in this software.

However, if your hard drive happens to be NTFS formatted - lucky you - then there isn't any file size limitation. You can do more reading on FAT32 and NTFS on the PC Guide website.

Points:

Originality: 4/10

Functionality: 7/10

Intuitiveness: 8/10

Price: US$39.95

At this point, I feel that the current price is a little high. However, once the compression is improved, then the equation quickly becomes:
worth x price = satisfaction.

Summary:

For smaller back-up needs, East-Tec Backup 2007 is an excellent choice and does backup and restore without a hitch. Just keep an eye on the file size size that you need to back-up.

There are dozens of compression utilities available and not all are restricted to 4 Gig. For example: One of the industry standards Stuffit Deluxe allows you to choose from any of 20 different compression formats. Another file compression utility example is PeaZip; which can split and join files and compress executables with strip/UPX. It's also open source, which I will actively support.

Please do back-up your files, even if you think you don't need to do so. One day you might find out that you've lost something of extreme value to you. For example: My mother died last year and I will cherish her emails always. I'd be devastated to lose them.

Customer Support:

I have communicated with Alexandra Preda in the past, and I believe that they are looking for alternative compression methods, in which case they'll come up out with a patch. I think at the moment they're looking at: ZIP64 which is now utilized in Vista.

At any time that I've had anything to do with Alexandra, my impression was that she seems committed to keeping East-Tec's customers happy and queries are answered within reasonable time.

I have also swapped emails with George Pecherle and found him to be incredibly diligent in his job - even following up with me on an issue I had, when he hadn't heard anything back from me about it.

Recommendation:

East-Tec Backup 2007 is recommended for basic back-up needs until the patch comes through, at which time I'd also recommend it for higher volume business use.

A workaround to make East-Tec Backup absolutely worthy even for business needs, would be to turn off compression in your options. Once the back-up has completed, compress the files with another compression/encryption utility such as PeaZip, that will split your files during the compression process, if necessary.

I'll quickly mention that East Technologies has a download link on their website for a trial version. Why not take them on their offer?

Well there we are again - another review completed. :)

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Remember to back-up!
~ Swan

All Content is Copyright © premreviews.blogspot.com
All Rights Reserved.
Developers, Software Houses and Web Designers:

Please contact Swan if you'd like to purchase a candid, constructive review, under privately agreed terms, of your software; games; or web site design.

Advertisers:

Please contact Swan, if you'd like to arrange for advertising your product on this web site.

Ahhh Agloco!

“The day will come when machines and software will tell us whom to know; what to eat; what to wear; when to go to work and what profession to pursue; when to sleep; what entertainments to enjoy and with whom to have any kind of relationship. It can’t be avoided and you will succumb.”
~ Swan (2005)

Document Backup 4.0.0.101

Wed, 8 Nov 2007 07:07:00 GMT

posted by Swan
Originally posted - September 5th, 2007

This blog, is slowly being recreated from the
Swan Reviews (Almost!) Everything web site.
Please adjust your bookmarks.
Still under Construction.

Good morning technophiles!

Everyone needs to find a good back-up utility. It's just folly to hope that you don't lose any data on your computer - it's happened to the best of us, at one time or another - and today's review is about just such a utility. So what do we look for in such a utility? Read on!

All back-up programs of which I'm aware, have the ability to set restore points, giving the user the ability to return to that point if something untoward should happen on the user's computer, such as file corruption; accidental file deletion and other unknown issues.

In general, back-ups should also have the ability to protect the user's program settings; registry files and any other files that are important to you - so let's see how well Document Back-up stands up:Supported Languages: English; French; Italian and Russian.

System Requirements:
Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista

Additional Requirements: Approximately 3 MB of free disk space is required for the program to run. Additional free disk space may be necessary for storing backup files.

Tested on: Windows XP Pro.

General Settings:

Preference for launch at start-up;

Priority of the back-up process, when the program is minimized;

Animation of the tray icon, during the back-up process.

Not being one for flashing bells and whistles and on my computer, I skipped the third check box altogether. You can also specify the behavior of the tray icon: they give you three choices - the most useful choice for me being to open the pop-up menu. The alternatives were to open the main menu, or to begin a back-up.

The user also needs to specify a temporary folder and whether or not it's preferred to have the program password protected - which I definitely always want to do. Back-ups are often a juicy source for hackers to explore.

Configuring a Back-up:

So let's see how this went as I configured a full weekly back-up:

Insofta has made it very easy for users to do this, by the implementation of a wizard:

Choose a name for your back-up: I usually call it something simple, like; Full Weekly Back-up. I always use a differential back-up for each day of the week, then a full back-up on Sundays.

Specify a back-up set: An easier explanation for new users is; select which files and/or folders you wish included, by checking the boxes shown to you in the next screen;

Select your back-up destination:

Options:

Back-up to Local/LAN: Here you can select to back your files up to your local disk, (I only recommend this option, if you choose LAN., in case your computer dies etc.) If you lose your computer, it's obviously pointless that you had a back-up on it;
Back-up to an FTP server: For new users; this stands for File Transfer Protocol, and can be a good way to store your back-ups. It's off-site, meaning that no matter what happens to your computer, your back-ups are safe. You can choose to upload it to your own ISP directory, (recommended,) or to a file storage location on the web. File Den seems to be very popular these days, for just such a reason;
Back-up to a CD/DVD: This would kill me and take around a dozen or more CDs to complete - and it would of course need my intervention to complete. I have hundreds of programs on my computer and this definitely would not be my choice, however if you've chosen only limited files/folders to back-up, then burning to this medium might be a good solution for you.

Specify Destination Options: This sounds like #3, but in fact it's additional information about your chosen destination, needed by the program;

Specify if you want to use the scheduler: Without the use of a scheduler, Document Backup would not be of any use to me. I simply don't have the time to babysit them. Plus, I like to run all my back-up tasks around 3am, when I can be sure that I don't need to use my computer. This way, I can designate the software to have top priority, so that it can complete its task in good time, before I get up to work in the mornings;

Schedule the item: Here you specify the parameters for the schedule you want. I chose Custom Period - then 7 days (every 7 days,) 3 hours (3am,) and 0 minutes. So what I told Document Backup to do is; run a back-up, every 7 days at 3am. I also checked the box to back-up if the scheduled time had been missed. This is a good option, as you may have had your computer turned off, or it may have crashed when it was scheduled to run;

This brings you to the final screen: There are two check boxes, that allow you to determine additional parameters; and if you want to create a shortcut on your desktop to manually kick off the task. Because I did want to specify additional parameters, the program took me to a Properties window - which has several tabs:

Item Name: Shows the back-up name that you've already chosen;

Back-up Set: Shows the files and folders you've chosen;

Destination: Shows where you intend to back-up your files;

Here you specify how the back-up file should be saved to the destination folder: I chose to use a ZIP file, so that I could save space with the large amount of files and folders I need to back-up. You can also stipulate your compression level; the default being normal, which I just left. I chose also to leave certain files UNcompressed, such as images, music etc.

The last option in this window, also allows you to determine whether or not you want to split the back-up into several different parts. This is something I always need to do, because of the size of my files and it's part of the reason that I've rejected other back-up programs. Most will split ok if you're backing up to CD/DVD., but not always when the destination is somewhere else.

Remember that ZIP files have a limitation of 4 Gig, so if you have a lot on your machine like I do, it's better that you do stipulate splitting.

The next window specifies your back-up type and a couple of other self-explanatory options. Basically, I chose to do a full backup of all selected files; as opposed to, a full back-up that only updated existing files, or, an incremental back-up, which only backs-up any new and modified files.

The other option for you to determine, is whether or not you want to use a time stamp with the back-ups. This is simply a user preference.

The next tab, is all about encryption: This is also a personal preference. I have a lot of sensitive client data on my machine. Hackers are well known to infiltrate people's systems and look at the My Documents folder (among other things!) because often there is a lot of sensitive/personal information stored in there. I would not store any back-ups without using encryption, but as I said, it's a personal preference.

I chose the 256-bit AES encryption because it's military strength and used to encrypt top secret military information. This doesn't mean that other algorithms are ineffective, it's just that AES is the best. However, you don't get the choice of any other type of encryption with Document Backup - AES with different bits is it.

And finally you've completed configuring your back-up!

I know it's a lot of time to spend initially, but if you've chosen to schedule your tasks, you won't have to do anything again, unless you want to create some other kind of special back-up from scratch. Some back-up programs allow you to copy/clone an entire back-up task, so that all you need to do is edit it for the new task.

Help File: Very comprehensive; layed out well and very easy to understand.

Features:

Easily configurable: I found this software to be easily configurable to my tastes - except for the fact that it doesn't offer differential back-ups;

Restore: I specifically tested this out, and had a great result with no issues;

Log: You can view logs, which is especially handy if you want to check on the program once in a while, to make sure that it's adhering to your back-up parameters. It's also handy when wanting to identify any issues that might occur.

Trial Version: You can download a trial version of the software.

Summary:

I thoroughly tested this program, by backing up My Documents on my computer, with the destination for the backed up files - over on David's computer, (via LAN.,) as he has more space than I do. *grumble grumble* ;)

I had no issues with the way the program worked whatsoever, and I was surprised at the speed with which it completed the task. My Documents at least on my machine, is a huge folder and defining David's computer as the destination was a breeze. Clearly there is no problem with using a LAN to back-up documents back and forth.

Always be careful, if backing-up to an internet file storage location. While handy, it's possible disaster for the user. (Without mentioning the company's name,) it's very possible for the company owning the internet location to go under and not notify their members. If this were to happen, you'd be left with no back-up files at all.

If you choose to back-up to CDs/DVDs, it's a general recommendation that they are stored off-site - that means, other than your home. If you were to have a fire, there would go all your data, settings and anything else that you specifically care about on your computer.

Just think how devastated you'd be, if you lost all your financial information! What would you do at tax time? How would you recreate all your receipt information for the year? How would you recover your encrypted financial program passwords? Somehow, you'd have to try and recreate all the information you had in there, once you reinstalled your tax program.

That was just an example - but I wanted to show you how extreme, loss of data can be.

If by using another back-up software, you choose to back-up to a USB stick, be careful there also. Loss of the USB stick, would constitute the same issues as the latter. Personally, this is not something I would choose to do, unless I'd planned on immediately going to a friend or relative, to store the back-up with them.

Four negatives:

There is no option to have differential back-ups which I prefer to incrementals;

Document Back-up doesn't have the ability to back-up to USB sticks, which although unimportant to me, might be an issue to others;

Error with overlapping fields in window, even after shutting down the program and launching again;

Will not back-up programs that are running or documents that are open.

Points:

Originality:4/10

Functionality: 7/10

Intuitiveness: 8/10

Price: US$29:00:

Definitely not worth this price as far as I'm concerned - there are too many features that are missing. Perhaps the next release will have brought this product into adulthood - but even then, to remain competitive in the back-up market, they will still need to bring their price down.

Shop for your software needs at: ~ Software by Swan ~

Recommendation:

I think this software still needs improvement for the use of power-users like myself, however, I do recommend it for simple back-up requirements.

Thank you again, for reading my reviews - your comments are always welcome!
~ Swan