Hi, I have been trying out AIS Backup for the last couple of weeks. I have spent many hours testing different backup programs to see which was best. Unfortunately I have still not located a program that has a great GUI, while also having the necessary features for my needs.
AIS is the best program that I have used so for in terms of features. I need to be able to backup to CDRW and I dont want to have to use packet writing (UDF) sofware. UDF can be a pain because it takes ages to format, reduces the amount of data you can store on the CD, cannot be read by all CD drives AND sometimes plays up - stuffing your backup job.
There are relatively few programs out there that can directly access your CDRW drive, AIS is one of them.
The area that AIS fails in is the User Interface. Downloading and installing Handy Backup, will demonstrate how simple it is to operate while also being very powerful. Unfortunatley Handy Backup is not capable of performing Incremental backups using CDRW's, as it does not keep a local database of all the necessary information.
As you can probably guess I would really like to have a program that looks like Handy Backup, but has the features of AIS. Currently AIS is the best program that I have found, because even though it may be a little clunky to use, it does manage to do all the tasks I need (and is also reasonably priced).
Apart from tweaking the UI, there are 4 other features that would be great if they could be included in a future update of this software.
1) A new front window/tab that can be selected that shows all of the follwoing on the one screen :-
a) All backup job names
b) When they were last run
c) If the last operation was successful
d) When the next scheduled operation is due (if applicable)
Good examples of this kind of page are in Handy Backup 4.1 and Second Copy 2000
2) An extra option that allows you to encrpyt the zip files after they have been made. This option is available in Handy Backup 4.1. Most importantly this stops people being able to see all your file names in the zip file without having to input a password. Blowfish encryption is also a good additional security measure
3) It would be nice to change the compression rate. Handy Backup allows you to set the compression rate at 10 different levels (this is excessive). This would allow the user to decide what level of compression provides the optimum between file size and speed. Just slighlty lowering the compression enabled some of my backups to finish much faster wihtout a significant increase in file size when compared to AIS High compression mode.
4) It would be nice to be able edit password options once a backup profile has been made. Again, a good example of this kind of interface can be seen in Handy Backup
Thanks for taking the time to read this post, as it is a little long. Hopefully this feedback will be useful for you. In the mean time my search continues for the perfect backup utility - but I will definately be checking back here to see if AIS is tweaked as it is very nearly there.
A few Suggestions
A few Suggestions
Last edited by luminous on Tue Sep 09, 2003 7:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Hi
Thanks for the input, we really appreciate this.
The idea of showing all jobs on the front screen is a good one, this could replace the existing Job page whose detail could be relegated to the View / Job form which we could also make available via a right click / View Job option, does this sound better?
The ‘blowfish’ option is also been looked at but for speed we may only encrypt the zip file central directory and embedded directory entries (I am assuming you know the layout of a zip file but in essence it is file header / compressed data / file header / compressed data / central directory) The headers and central directory are not encrypted in the zip file format so you must bear in mind AISBackup will not be producing zip files in this case. I have not heard of anybody decrypting a password protected zip file except by brute force so either use long passwords or the AISBackup ‘encrypt the password as 64 to the power of 40 bytes’.
The change password could be implemented but only when an existing backup is re-set using the Manage Backup / Reset Backup option.
We looked at all 10 zip file compression options and used what we consider the best time vs. size option. In a 1.5 GB backup of mixed data there was only 4% difference in zip file size compared to a large difference in backup time. The zip dlls we use are used in other freeware zip packages that you may download and test:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/ ... links.html
We thought our original High / Medium and Low compression would be better named as very long / long and not too bad backup time so left the choice out of the program.
As you are looking backup programs, test the ability to restore Windows XP to a new partition or drive on the PC, after a re-boot using the restored drive make sure A/ the PC does not hang and B/ The Documents and Settings folders are been used from the restored drive rather than the previous boot drive. To put the restored copy of Windows into the boot menu use the Tools / Edit Windows Boot Menu option. I mention this because parts of the operating system need to be 're-engineered' before it is possible to boot properly, this is something AISBackup does.
Barry
Thanks for the input, we really appreciate this.
The idea of showing all jobs on the front screen is a good one, this could replace the existing Job page whose detail could be relegated to the View / Job form which we could also make available via a right click / View Job option, does this sound better?
The ‘blowfish’ option is also been looked at but for speed we may only encrypt the zip file central directory and embedded directory entries (I am assuming you know the layout of a zip file but in essence it is file header / compressed data / file header / compressed data / central directory) The headers and central directory are not encrypted in the zip file format so you must bear in mind AISBackup will not be producing zip files in this case. I have not heard of anybody decrypting a password protected zip file except by brute force so either use long passwords or the AISBackup ‘encrypt the password as 64 to the power of 40 bytes’.
The change password could be implemented but only when an existing backup is re-set using the Manage Backup / Reset Backup option.
We looked at all 10 zip file compression options and used what we consider the best time vs. size option. In a 1.5 GB backup of mixed data there was only 4% difference in zip file size compared to a large difference in backup time. The zip dlls we use are used in other freeware zip packages that you may download and test:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/ ... links.html
We thought our original High / Medium and Low compression would be better named as very long / long and not too bad backup time so left the choice out of the program.
As you are looking backup programs, test the ability to restore Windows XP to a new partition or drive on the PC, after a re-boot using the restored drive make sure A/ the PC does not hang and B/ The Documents and Settings folders are been used from the restored drive rather than the previous boot drive. To put the restored copy of Windows into the boot menu use the Tools / Edit Windows Boot Menu option. I mention this because parts of the operating system need to be 're-engineered' before it is possible to boot properly, this is something AISBackup does.
Barry