How do you like ZipBackup?

I'm trying it out for my users, so we can get some automagic or on-demand backup for them. Looks reasonable to me so far... does anyone have some experience with this one, good OR bad?

Thanks!

 

Apparently nobody cares one way or the other...

Here's my two cents' worth: after a couple of weeks' lightweight use, I like it okay.

Pro: it works, so far

Con: nothing in particular, so far


I'm using it in "incremental" mode to back up data from an internal IIS server in a specific app directory used by one department to a backup machine in my office. The zipbackup is run at 2100 every day ON the backup machine. I'll be widening this to include a server for two other departments from a different (local to them) server to the same backup machine in my office... and thence to an offsite backup.

If no one cares enough to respond, I'll let this thread die unless either a spectacular Pro or Con occurs.

 

First, a question. To me, the data backup is the most critical part, but certainly there can be issues with complete failure of a computer, although my experience has been that it is much rarer than data file problems. Still, it's a good idea to have the whole system backed up, just not on a frequent basis as with data... which brings me to the question: as far as I can tell, Acronis TI does have a "ghost" (or whatever you want to call it) capability so the whole drive can be "cloned / backed up" as needed... but can that be done by having a single copy of TI, or will users need a separate copy for each machine?

Second, to answer the questions you posed - as far as I can tell, 'til now.
The backup is selectable as to full copy, differential, or incremental. I favor incremental, although that makes restoring a little more labor intensive. The files created are (or can be) true ZIP files with directory management, which means that yes, you can restore individual files by opening the ZIPS and taking what you want from them. I use Total Commander AKA Windows Commander, which is based on the old tried-and-true Norton Commander, but greatly updated - it has built-in handling of ZIP files (and other compressed files) and two directory panels with LAN and FTP capability, making it damned easy to copy, move, rename, etc. A "full restore" would consist of picking the base full ZIP and restoring from that, and then working forward (the ZIPS are named with date/time) and extracting new files and overwriting old files as required. This obviously is tedious and not something for a "normal" user to do. I don't know - because I haven't tried - whether the program's User Interface lets them do things like that easily.

All that said, I've also tried Cobian backup, and I quite like it, particularly because it adds the capability to send the backup to an FTP site, which makes the "offsite" backup very easy indeed.

Thanks for your earlier response, and I hope this information helps you and anyone else who sees it.