16 Comments for Oops!Backup

• Mar 13 2010 7:38am
  Mr. Yoop (Frequent Flyer)
  Oops!Backup is a great tool. Running permanently in the background, it backups your files continuously. If you have to step back to an older version or just want to restore a certain file you can do it with Oops!Backup in just a few seconds.
  
  Thanks to a intuitive interface, it can be configured easily and starts protecting your data from the first minute on. Thus, I recommend this tool - it is one of the tools that should not be missing on any computer.
  
  Mr. Yoop
• Mar 14 2010 7:32am
  Frank Stephens (Visitor)
  Oops!Backup, AJC Active Backup, and FileHamster all perform a similar function in different ways. I consider all of these to be toys since not a single one of them can backup my Documents. Oops!Backup and FileHamster extend the total path, which causes long filenames to fail to be backed up. AJC Active Backup doesn't handle Unicode filenames. AJC Active Backup and FileHamster backup changes on-the-fly, Oops!Backup does so at timed intervals. Therefor, Oops!Backup will miss multiple versions within the interval, but sometimes that's desirable. Oops!Backup is the only one which can take volume snapshots using VSS to backup in-use files. Oops!Backup consumes by far the most resources, has lots of bugs, but is the fastest at listing and searching its archives. FileHamster is very slow at listing and searching, but AJC Active Backup is by far the slowest. Oops!Backup and AJC are capable of using reverse deltas to save space, and AJC can also compress. FileHamster has by far the most features, but there are also lots of bugs. Oops!Backup and FileHamster archives can be browsed with Windows Explorer. Oops!Backup has a nice UI, but it's buggy and there's no help. Personally, I think true backup solutions with near-continuous backup are probably better.
• Mar 15 2010 9:30am
  David Vella (Altaro Software Vendor)
  Hi Frank,
  
  Read your post and am very surprised; I will do my best to answer all your concerns below.
  
  1. Oops!Backup cannot backup your documents as it extends total path.
  
  We do not extend any paths. When we backup we do not change anything in the source folders (your documents) - so saying that we extend the total path is very very weird. I don't know when you actually installed Oops!Backup but if you experienced these issues then we would really like to get in touch with you to see what the real issue is.
  
  2. Lots of bugs and consumes most resources.
  
  Saying that Oops!Backup has a lot of bugs is untrue. I am not saying that our product has zero bugs as any type of software product has bugs but the way you are saying it's as if our product is riddled with bugs - which is far from the truth. Again - please email me (david@altaro.com) with details.
  
  As to the resource usage - our product is very lean on resources especially when compared with other backup products.
  
  3. There's no help in Oops!Backup
  
  I give you this, yes we are still building our help database but saying there is no help is not true. Apart from the guides we have at http://wiki.altaro.com we also have a support community that I invite you and the readers to visit so you can get an idea on our level of support - which is fantastic. The community is at http://www.altaro.com/community/
  
  I invite the users to download our product to see for themselves - you can downloaded a fully-featured version of our product for 30 days - like that you can check it out before the BitsduJour campaign. The download button is at the top of this article - just beside the 'Buy Now' button. I urge everyone to download it and see for themselves.
  
  Frank - please email me (david@altaro.com) so I can look into the issues you say you are experiencing.
  
  Below I am also posting a couple of third-party reviews and Oops!Backup benchmarks.
  
  http://4sysops.com/archives/raffle-oopsbackup-continuous-data-protection-for-client-computers/
  http://4sysops.com/archives/raffle-oopsbackup-reversedelta-and-laptop-backups/
  
  http://www.pcworld.com/article/184406/oopsbackup_is_a_delightfully_easy_way_to_back_up_data.html
  
  http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/networking/?p=2351
  
  http://www.top-windows-tutorials.com/file-backup-software.html
• Mar 15 2010 12:35pm
  Frank Stephens (Visitor)
  David Vella, I don't make comments without foundation, nor do I engage in back-and-forth with developers. Extending the path length: Oops!Backup retains the original full path, including filename. It stores the backup files in a location which has a drive letter, folder OopsBackup, a derived foldername based on the user name, folder Main Module, folders History and Latest. Prepending the backup path to the full original path definitely increases the total path length for the backup, exceeding Windows limits for files which were at or near maximum path length. This is an extraordinarily basic issue which any developer should be aware of. FileHamster appends timestamp information to the filename, which again is a big no-no and results in too-long full file paths.
  
  I did find Oops!Backup to be buggy. It gets into a weird loop at startup where it constantly checks for changes when there are none. I noticed various UI bugs, such as not updating the UI to reflect the latest status in places (UI synchronization is an issue which all developers should check for).
  
  There is no standard Windows help within Oops!Backup, no standard Help menu, no response to F1.
  
  Resource usage is quite high compared to AJC Active Backup and FileHamster. You can use any standard resource monitoring tool. I find AnVir Task Manager to be convenient because it can display constantly-updating windows on the desktop with the top consumers of disk bandwidth, CPU usage, and memory consumption.
  
  I thought that I did a fair job explaining the various pros and cons of the document backup utilities which I mentioned, and Oops!Backup definitely has some pros. I think that Oops!Backup would be fine for some users. As I said, I personally haven't found document-backup solutions to be very useful. There are other, more complete backup solutions which don't have issues with the total length of the file name/path.
  
  In case I want to test it further, I left Oops!Backup installed for now, but I have blocked it from starting. It's unlikely that I will spend more time on it. Again, that's just for my purposes; as I said, some people are quite happy with document-backup/versioning solutions.
• Mar 15 2010 1:01pm
  David Vella (Altaro Software Vendor)
  Frank,
  
  You say we extend the path name and that it is an "extraordinarily basic issue which any developer should be aware of". Well we do handle long file paths as we use a Windows Command (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363851(VS.85).aspx) that allows us to do just that.
  
  You are saying that we cannot back up your documents folder - and this is not true - as we do back them up, and you can restore them using our BackInTime browser. Since Oops!Backup is still installed - check it out and see for yourself.
  
  Although Oops!Backup prepends a couple of directories to the documents folder, we use appropriate APIs so as to handle them correctly.
  
  You also said that Oops!Backup went into a weird loop at startup. It would obviously be stupid for me to say that it isn't true as issues sometimes do crop up - if you are up to it we would like to look into the issue you experienced. We have hundreds of desktops running Oops!Backup and we never had any such issue.
  
  Various UI bugs - your comment is a bit generic and if there are certain bugs then we will look at fixing them; then again these are minor issues and it isn't fair to call the product buggy because in some places it's "not updating the UI to reflect the latest status in places".
  
  You see - in your first post you said there is no Help in Oops!Backup - and now you are saying that there is no 'Standard Windows Help' and no response to the F1 button. Having NO Help is totally different then not providing help in a standard windows format. We do have help - but in a different way. Although I do agree with you that Standard Windows Help format would be ideal; saying that we he no help is unfair.
  
  Frank - again, if you do have time drop me an email - we would like to check out the issue you experienced.
  
  Thanks Frank.
• Mar 15 2010 1:03pm
  David Vella (Altaro Software Vendor)
  P.S. Re the Windows API - we are using the Unicode version
  
  In the ANSI version of this function, the name is limited to MAX_PATH characters. To extend this limit to 32,767 wide characters, call the Unicode version of the function and prepend "\\?\" to the path. For more information, see Naming a File.
• Mar 19 2010 11:25am
  Jonathan Keener (Frequent Flyer)
  I'd have to say, I'm pretty impressed overall with the trial version. I've used both AJC Active Backup and History Explorer to do backups like this, and I think running the trial has convinced me to switch. (AJC Active Backup has the problem with the path length, as mentioned in the previous comments, and I've had to kill the History Explorer process numerous times because it appeared to be running out of control)
  
  Here are a couple of comments/questions:
  
  1. I've got it currently set to run every hour. Is there any way to change it to run every hour, at the half hour mark? The reason I ask, is I also run ShadowProtect Desktop, and it is performing an incremental image backup every hour too. So far, I haven't seen a problem, but it would be nice to stagger the backups to avoid any potential conflicts.
  
  2. Looking at the Reports, the Backup History report mentions the number of changes, and that there were a certain number of warnings. For example, the last backup there were 105 changes, and 56 warnings. When I double click on the report, it brings up the details, and by these, it mentions "File Skipped (See warnings)". Where do I go to see the warnings?
  
  3. Feature Idea - In both he Events Since the Last Backup and Backup History Details report, it would be nice to right click and use an item to build exclusions. For example, I see a number of tmp files in the Events since last backup, if I could right click there, and have an exclusion form brought up that is prepopulated with attributes of the selected entry, and then I could choose, different options, like exclude the specific file/path, exclude that extension in that path, exclude that extension in all paths, etc.
  
  4. In the Go BackInTime and Restore screen, is there any way to start at a "My Computer" view so I can see my drives first? I'm backing up from multiple drives, so this would be helpful.
  
  5. I don't see any windows explorer right click integration. It would be useful to be able to right click on a file or folder and bring up the "Go BackInTime and Restore" screen.
  
  6. Is there any way to do a compare to current, or compare multiple backups? What I'm thinking mostly about is text comparisions, for source code. It would be nice to be able to plug in an external compare tool, like UltraCompare or Beyond Compare to be able to see the differences in different historical versions and the current version on the drive. This is one of the key items that could cause me not to switch, because it's very important to know what I'm restoring.
  
  Like I said at the beginning, I am impressed with the tool, and I hope that the developers continue to improve it.
• Mar 20 2010 3:38am
  David Vella (Altaro Software Vendor)
  Hi Jon and Frank,
  
  Thanks for your comments! Here are some answers:
  
  @Frank:
  While it is true that we extend the path at the beginning of the string (otherwise we would create a mess, and this is inevitable anyway when backing up to network shares), we bypass Windows' 260 char limit and directly exploit NTFS's ability to store filepaths up to 32768 chars long.
  
  When restoring the files, the Oops!Backup browser automatically resolves these paths back to the original. This is completely abstracted from the user.
  
  @Jon: Thanks for your kind words. First of all allow me to state that the philosophy of Oops!Backup as it stands is that we do not want to overload the software with a series of options just for the sake of it, resulting in options that only a handful of people will use. We wanted something straightforward that will just work most of the time, especially for the non-technical user! Keep in mind it is a home-product.
  
  Inevitably, this will result in more technical users like yourself seeing certain inflexibility, and we understand this. Our development team is very active at the moment, and we are introducing more and more functionality as time goes by, but only after listening to our customers and making sure any new options are truly needed and they are properly presented in the interface.... with that in mind, here are a couple of answers to your questions:
  
  1. We are in the process of adding better scheduling functionality here, but at the moment when the schedule is a function of "hours" then we try align automatically on the hour. You can change over to 45 min schedule for example (or 55 mins etc.. ) because in that case, we no longer try to align to any particular time.
  
  2. You need to right click on the entry, and a two-entry context menu will come up. One for the changes and one for the warnings. If many of the warnings are due to locked files, I would recommend enabling VSS from the advanced settings.
  
  3. You are perfectly right. In fact this will be included in a release in the near future.
  
  4. We try showing the highest common denominator. If you have multiple drives then you should see them in the first screen.. what exactly are you seeing? This could be a bug, so can you send a screenshot to support@altaro.com?
  
  5 and 6. Yes again you are right, we have plans to introduce this in the near future too. The compare feature is higher on our list than the explorer integration for the simple reason that many more people requested it.
  
  Anyway, we are excited to see this product keep on growing and I hope you will not be disappointed :)
  
  Cheers
  Julian
• Mar 20 2010 5:39am
  Frank Stephens (Visitor)
  Julian, David, Jon--I did verify that Oops!Backup is using Unicode extended-length paths where appropriate, so it does handle long filenames OK (unfortunately, a lot of other software doesn't, but that's OK, as typically you would restore a file that you were interested in).
  
  When there was activity, Oops!Backup would typically indicate something like "Last backup Today at (whenever) - 1 new change, next backup in 3 mins." However, after I restarted, it would say "Last backup Today at (whenever) - No changes yet (full check still pending)", then it would check, which is resource-intensive, then continually repeat, apparently without delay (true, I had a short 5-minute delay, but when changes and backups were occurring, there were always a few minutes before the next backup). If it's relevant, this was on Vista.
  
  Regarding UI synchronization, in the main UI, Oops!Backup displays the "play" symbol and "Backup Now" when it's not busy, and the "stop" symbol and "Abort" when it is busy, except that it's not well synchronized. For example, when using VSS, it takes a while to create a shadow copy at the beginning of a backup, but the UI doesn't change from "Backup Now" to "Abort" until after the shadow copy is created. The "mini" UI would show the "play" symbol with a greyed-out "Oops!Backup is busy...", when it either should have shown the "stop" symbol with "Abort", or greyed-out the "play" symbol.
  
  I may test Oops!Backup more later today. I had been testing on a flash drive, which is slow, but I just received a new external hard drive.
  
  Jon, AJC Active Backup modifies the filename if the path is too long. I'd have to test what it does; Explorer sees the modified filename, of course, but I would expect AJC to restore the original filename. I'm somewhat curious as to why you would want a document-backup utility when you have StorageCraft ShadowProtect Desktop, which is capable of near-continuous backup, although a document-backup utility would have easier selection of different versions of a particular document. (Rebit SaveMe and Acronis True Image Home 2010 also have near-continuous backup ability). The open-source WinMerge is better than most other differencing apps.
• Mar 20 2010 9:23am
  Steven Avery (Visitor)
  Hi Folks,
  
  Great discussion, nice to see the developer very actively responding. Note that the forum has moderate activity even though fairly new.
  http://www.altaro.com/community/index.php?board=2.0
  
  (Bits .. please ... stay with these types of products .. keep away from the mega-conglomerates !)
  
  Donationcoder actively discussing on this thread.
  
  Re: alternative to filehamster?
  http://www.donationcoder.com/Forums/bb/index.php?topic=19834.msg199288;topicseen#msg199288
  
  Shalom,
  Steven
• Mar 20 2010 9:37am
  Jonathan Keener (Frequent Flyer)
  Frank, as for why I use this type of utility along with StorageCraft ShadowProtect Desktop, is to have some redundancy and ease of recovery depending on the situation. (I kind of go a little overkill on my backups!) The layers of backup I have are:
  
  1. ShadowProtect Desktop images my main drives every hour. (This is primarily for hard drive recovery issues)
  
  2. I use a Document backup solution (Currently have been using AJC Active Backup, but in the past few months have been running into the path length issue, which in my situation, caused errors. Other than these errors, I've been very happy with AJC backup. (Below is the response I got from their support regarding this)
  
  ------
  Yes it looks like the path is too long. The only thing you can do with this version is to shorten the path. We have recently overcome the long path problem with our new AJC Sync v3 product and eventually this will be added in to a newer version of AJC Active Backup but I’m afraid this is quite a way off yet.
  ------
  I like to use a Document backup solution because it gives me an easier ability to recover single files and typically allows me to compare files before recovery.
  
  3. I use an Internet Based backup solution for certain directories. Currently I'm using http://www.safecopybackup.com/. I've used carbonite and mozy, but with multiple computers, safecopybackup saved some money.
  
  4. For Source Code, I use an internet based svn, currently Code Spaces. This allows for doing diffs nicely on source code. However the document management tool running frequently provides an additional level of backup for changes in between checkins. (I usually check in my code once a day)
  
  Overall, from what I see, I think I will be getting 3-5 licenses of Oops!Backup for all my machines. One feature that would be nice with it is the ability to have a common repository (SafeBackup has this)
• Mar 20 2010 1:44pm
  R G (Visitor)
  Sounds interesting. Even though it may have a cpl of bugs, I am very pleased with the replies/communication from the devs. (If I couldn't live with a cpl of bugs, I'd have to give up Windows :P) Gonna try this one - thanks for the deal.
  
  regards,
  R
• Mar 20 2010 11:19pm
  Stephen Cohen (Rising Star)
  Does OOps! compless its backups? If so, does it compress file-by-file, folder-by-folder, or ???? Also, what compression is used: zip, ....?
• Mar 21 2010 1:18am
  Ken Wakefield (Visitor)
  I was a bit slow here, up late, saw the special, by the time I had looked at teh product, day was over as 24 Hours in Australia different to 24 hours in Bits De Jour land.
  
  However, I had been looking for an on the fly backup since I trashed Acronis as unworkable software, and recently bought AJC Active Backup from Bits De Jour. First it wowed me, but then I realized it didn't allow Shadow copy of opened files, and it's aging interface went to pieces on my display. Then I looked at their Sync beta as a replacement for Synctoy with Versioning, and it's all to complicated an interface for general use.
  
  Well, here is OopsBackup, which has it all!! Maybe it'll be even better by the time it is on Bits De Jour again!!
• Apr 25 2010 9:48pm
  T Raynor (Superstar)
  I hope you offer this again in the future, as I missed it this time around?
• Apr 26 2010 10:16am
  Roger Thomasson (Bits du Jour Admin)
  @ T Raynor
  
  Unfortunately we can't ever guarantee if and when we'll re-promote a title. However, you can sign up for a notification by clicking the "Notify Me" button above.
  
  -r

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