Product endorsement

Nov. 6th, 2007 11:29 am
roadrunnertwice: Me looking up at the camera, wearing big headphones and a striped shirt. (Mischief brewin'!)
So you're on Windows and you need a fast, automatic, accurate, and SANE backup program.

SyncBackSE. The end. It's $30. Just shell out, because it's worth it.

Now my parents' user data folder is being synced every morning, their iTunes library and entire C: drive are being synced weekly, said jobs are happening FAST because it compares files and only copies the new/updated ones, it's not barfing on Unicode file names, it's not barfing on locked/open files (since it uses the Volume Shadow Copy Service), and if an error occurs and one of the hard drives' days are numbered, the program cries to me about it via email with a dump of the logfile. Oh, and the backups are a plain old directory structure on an NTFS volume, instead of some inexplicable proprietary re-imagining of a tarfile. Basically, at long last, I win.


(Oh, on an unrelated note, did you know that it's sometimes possible for an NTFS directory full of files to become completely ownerless and inaccessible when you unshare a shared folder? Neither did I! And if you're not running XP Pro, you have to restart in Safe Mode to assign ownership to someone! Pretty awesome.)
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I wasn't actually going to use Rsync anyway, but still.

Nov. 3rd, 2007 11:42 pm
roadrunnertwice: Me looking up at the camera, wearing big headphones and a striped shirt. (THE SHITBOX WENT TITS UP)
WHAT.

So I need a nice, simple, user-friendly automated backup system for my parents' Windows box. Turns out it doesn't exist. I mean, I didn't figure I'd be able to find anything as good as what I use on my Mac, but damn, there's not even a usable version of Rsync out here without manually replacing the Cygwin dll. BUGGER EVERYTHING EVER.

It looks like I'm stuck with Microsoft's NTBackup.exe. It has a fair amount to recommend it, but it is NOT user-friendly (which means I'm going to have to babysit it by phone), and it looks like restoring from a backup is going to be kind of a bitch.

This is why nerds are pressuring their family members to switch to Macs, lately: mortals simply cannot be expected to successfully administer a Windows system, and nerds cannot be expected to always be on hand.

(Oh, also, people who develop critical tax and accounting software? YOU MOTHERFUCKERS NEED TO STOP STORING USER DATA IN C:\PROGRAM FILES AND C:\WINDOWS. Jesus Aitch, my job would be so much easier if I could just rig something to copy the c:\documents and settings directory and the D drive, the way I'm supposed to be able to.)

EDIT: Okay, no, actually? I just spent an hour or so playing with NTBackup, and it is unspeakably baroque. It still thinks it's writing to a tape drive. In 2007.

EDIT: Huh! SyncBackSE actually looks like it might be exactly what I'm looking for. Unfortunately, uh... well, here's the customer support email I just sent them:

I downloaded a 30-day trial of SyncBackSE this evening, and while I was putting it through its paces, the yearly switch back to Standard Time rolled through, and our computer's clock automatically flipped back an hour.

Immediately, SyncBackSE threw a "Your trial has expired" dialogue at me and shut itself down.

I'm assuming what happened there was that you added a watchdog routine to keep people from diddling their clocks backward, and it triggered itself when the clock jumped. Which is totally hilarious, but it kind of leaves me up a creek. I actually *do* want to give your product a fair chance, since it looks damn promising; is there anything you guys can do for me?
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