Retrospect Express BackUp

Let's face it - we'd all rather spend our money on a whizzy new piece of software than a boring backup application. But you only have to be struck down by a hard disk failure once to know how important it is to back up your important data regularly.

Express BackUp is designed for personal rather than business use, and as a result doesn't overload the user with option screens and configuration windows. Instead you get an easy-to-follow wizard.

Upon trying the software with a CD-R drive, we were happy to find that it uses 'packet-writing' to write data to the CD. This means that it can write to the CD bit by bit rather than all in one go. It also means that it can add extra files incrementally to a backup CD to keep it current.

While practically every CD-RW drive in production now supports packet-writing, some early CD-R drives don't and won't work with Express BackUp.

Lots of other removable drives are supported, however, so if you've got a super-floppy, zip drive or something similar, you shouldn't have any problems. Those with more obscure backup hardware might want to download the 30-day trial version from the company's website to make sure it works with their system.

Overall, the program is easy to use and has good default settings that encourage sensible backup strategies. However, it can be a touch slow at backing up files, especially when it's using compression techniques to squeeze down file sizes.

Nevertheless, Express BackUp is still a good choice for those who don't want to risk losing the data held on their computer.

Contact
Computers Unlimited: 020 8200 8282 www.dantz.co.uk/express.html