Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Keepin' to the Bright Side of Life with Sunnysoft Backup Manager 4.0
Posted by Don Tolson in "SOFTWARE" @ 09:00 AM
There is also no ability to define sets or types of files to be included in the backup or to be restored in Simple mode. It's basically an all or nothing proposition, but it does include Databases, Files and the Registry. You can, however, tell Backup Manager to ignore certain types of files in the backup (for instance, other backup files) via the Backup Exclusions options from the Menu.
Figure 5: The Backup Exclusions screen.
Once you start the Backup process, the first step Backup Manager takes is to reset your system.
Figure 6: Resetting the system to establish a common start point.
During the backup process, BM identifies what it is currently working on via progress bars for both the current item and the entire backup, plus naming the current file being worked on. Changing colours on the various icons identify when each type is completed.
Figure 7: Backup is progressing nicely.
It took me a little while to get used to the Registry as building blocks, Databases as a paper stack, File Folders and SD Card for each of the types. And the colour change is somewhat subtle – changing from blue to dark grey when they are done. Unfortunately, the same dark grey shade is also used to identify types that are excluded from the backup.
The backup process itself is fairly quick – taking about 4 to 5 minutes on my lightly-loaded HTC Galaxy. By default, the output is a compressed, self-extracting executable for restoring the system. Backup Manager 4 actually produces three files – the backup file containing the compressed content (.bkp); and executable to restore the content (.bkp.exe) and a text-based log file (also with a .bkp extension) describing the content and displaying any messages from the backup process. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any way to display this log file except inside the Backup Manager application, probably due to the .bkp extension. It would have been nice to have this as a straight text file which could have been displayed within Notes or Pocket Word.
Figure 8: A display of the logfile after backup is completed.
The compression routines do a reasonable job, taking the 21 mb of data from my HTC and compressing it into a 8.5 mb file. The executables are small at 40 kb and the log files take only 50 kb each. I'm not sure I really like the 3-file approach, since it introduces a possible point of failure if either of the matching backup or executables is missing.
Of course, restoring from the backup can be as simple as double-tapping the .exe file. From my perspective, this is preferable since, in an emergency situation, it means you don't have to install and re-register the backup program first. You can however, restore within Backup Manager itself. By tapping on the Restore button, BM4 searches the device to locate the most recent Simple backup modules and asks to proceed.
Figure 9: Simple mode Restore – only the most recent Simple backup is displayed. If you say No here, BM4 returns to the main screen.
Once you say Yes, restore proceeds from there. After completion of a restore, BM4 resets the system again.
Figure 10: Restore completed. Time for another soft reset.
It should be noted that there is a difference in naming convention between backups produced via Simple mode and those produced in Advanced mode. The Simple mode versions are prefaced by 'ibackup' by default (i.e. ibackup.bkp) and subsequent Simple backups are appended with a three-digit counter (e.g. ibackup_001, ibackup_002, etc.). Hence, when in Simple mode, the scan for available restores only looks for the most recent module named ibackup.
