Back ‘em Up
2nd of an occasion series of reviews of useful little esoteric tools.
This time we’ve got a backup/file synchronisation tool that has some good uses, especially in a SOHO environment where you can’t probably justify a more full on backup solution.
Syncback is a professional looking, slick Windows application. It’s a proper, usable application, installs like a commerical product, and then works in a professional manner, as you would expect of full on commerical products.
When you load it up the first time, it’s very intuitive, first off, you’ll want to create a new profile, so you click the big ‘new…’ button. You then get a bit of a wizard to run through, and amazingly, when you get to the point of actually saying where you want to backup/synchronise from and to, and it’s all really well laid out and you know exactly what it’s going to do in each case.
Say you want it to backup files from the source to the destination, but also copy a file back from the destination if its not in the source (as if you’d accidently deleted something for example), easy. You just click from the siple tab, to the advanced tab, there you have 3 sections, what to do if the file is in both the source and destination, but are different (ones been changed since last time), what to do if a file is in the source, but not destination, and what to do if a file is in the destination, but not the source.
Very clear, very obvious, you don’t need to be very up with computers to use.
Want it to only do certain files, or certain types of file? Easy, go to the filters tab and tell it which to do.
Want it not to do certain files? Easy, same filters tab to tell it to ignore certain things (which is actually more use than it sounds intially).
And for the basic functions, that’s it. you create the profile, then highlight it and click run when you want to do a sync/backup/restore. Or use the scheduler to do it automatically for you at set times. Very useful if you want to backup some files to a seperate computer or hard drive automatically everyday for example.
beyond the basic functions, you can also zip the destination files up. You can have FTP details, in case you want to backup/sync/restore from the web. The same is true for making network connections (you can even enter network usernames and passwords for it to use if requsted).
You can ask it to email you a log of whats happened. Great in my kind of position at work as a network admin. I’ve installed this app on some laptops for staff based outside the office. I I could set it to email me when ever they run the synchronisation to the server for various things. Not only will it let me know if it’s worked or not, but i can track how often they are doing it.
There are a few other features, but they are the main one, others are generally smaller options and things I haven’t found so much need for yet.
I am now also using Syncback at home for my MP3 player.
8GB of ripped CD music, plus some downloaded off iTunes, and a player that doesn’t sync itself. So, I’ve got a profile setup to check whats on the player, and copy anything off my hard drive thats missing.
I have it setup for various people to update local versions of a web site on their laptops. They have Apache installed locally, with our website there, so they can show it to customers without needing to be online. That obviously needs updating every so often to make sure any template changes have been updated and the product DB is correct. A few profiles in Syncback solve that problem nicely, all linked together with a group profile, so you only actually tell it to run one profile, and all 3 are processed.
It’s also used to backup any work documents like letters or customer contact records back to our server, so if they get a problem with the laptop, its breask or gets stolen or something, it’s back on the server, which is also backed up to tape internally, and little or no data is lost.
For use in the SOHO area, or, as in our case, for people working for a larger company, but based away from the main office (in effect, a home office then!), Syncback seems a very useful, useable, configurable tool for the masses. It’s not the quickest backup tool around, but it’s free, while a tape drive and Veritas Backup Exec is a bit more pricey….
All you need is something to backup too, I don’t think you can automate burning to a CD for example…..