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
Advanced mode
Advanced mode is available from the Menu menu and can be established as the default start up mode for Backup Manager, if so desired. Here is where you get to do the fun stuff such as selecting exactly what to backup, scheduling regular backups and telling the system to do an automatic backup when battery power is running low.
Selection of material to backup can be done by general type (Databases, Registry and Files) and in the case of Files, by identifying specific files to be included. (As with the Simple mode, the excluded file types are ignored.) Selection of files to be included in the backup uses a hierarchical tree structure.
Figure 11: Selection of types of files to backup in Advanced mode
The three basic types are displayed and then further selections can be made under the Databases and Files types.
Figure 12: Providing finer detail for Database selections.
On the selection screen, there are 3 buttons displayed which are seen frequently throughout the application. The button with the ellipsis (3 dots) is used to browse for other locations. The 'gear' goes to the Settings screen, and the document ('abc') which is available only in Advanced mode, goes to a Notes field to allow the user to provide additional information about the backup.
This version of Backup Manager includes the capability to backup up the contents of any storage cards within the unit. I've not really used this option since I'm not sure I understand the need. Aren't storage cards supposed to be the non-volatile backup medium? Wouldn't that be like trying to backup a backup? And if the card failed, you'd lose the backup anyway. I guess I've been lucky never to have a card fail on me. :wink:
Backup files produced under Advanced mode are named Backup_YYYY_MM_DD.bkp and again, have 3 files associated with each, depending upon selection of an executable or not.
As you would expect, Restores under Advanced mode provide much more capability than Simple mode. When Restore is selected in Advanced mode, BM4 scans the device to locate all backups (either Simple or Advanced) and presents them in a list.
Figure 13: List of available backups for Restoring from.
Once one is selected, the application asks if you'd like to proceed with a full restore from the backup.
Figure 14: Full restore from the selected backup. If you say 'No' here, BM4 will assume you want to do a partial restore and present the hierarchical structure to define what to restore.
In BM4, it is possible to attempt to cancel during the middle of the Restore process. However, BM4 does provide a fairly dire warning about the consequences.
Figure 15: Attempting to cancel in the middle of restore – not a good idea.
