Handy Backup Review

Introduction
Handy Backup is a backup software that can can backup your data to any type of storage media, including remote FTP servers which I will test today. The publisher claims that the software is easy to use and that restoring is merely the process of clicking a button.

Installation:

Okay, here we go. I just launched the installation program and my first impression is that it looks old. When I see those old styled installation programs with blue backgrounds I begin to wonder when they last updated the software. The installation should in my opinion be far more better looking.

A good thing though was the installation time, which was less than ten seconds. Let us see how this software runs.

Adding backup item:

After launching the program, a neat little icon appeared in my system tray. Sadly it has only three choices, two of which is to open or exit the program. The third executes all items.

The "New Item Wizard" lets me create a backup, restore or synchronize item without explaining what any of these items really do. Perhaps it is fairly obvious what they do, but it is worth nothing anyway since we are told that the software should be very easy to use.

Since I want to backup my data to an FTP server, I choose the Backup item. The next screen lets me choose which files and folders to be included in the backup. As an example I chose the folder of one of my website projects. You can also add a filter that excludes certain files or only includes certain files. To try this out I chose to only backup my .php files.

The next step of the process is to specify a destination for the backup. You can select Local/LAN, FTP or CD-R/RW. I select FTP and fill in my FTP server information and specifies a folder to upload to.

I then move on to the next screen where I can choose between incremental or full backup, where incremental means to only backup files that have been changed since the last backup. Incremental is what I want, so I select it. I also have other options, like deleting all files from destination before backup or store backups separetly with timestamps, but I don't want that.

The next screen allows me to select if I want to compress my files or/and encrypt them. Encryption is not necessary for me but I would like to compress the files. There are two choices, single file or multiple files. I choose single file. I then specify that I want to use medium compression quality. A good thing when selecting compression quality is that this is done with a slider bar, and not a drop down menu with few choices.

After that I move on to select at which time I would like the backup to occur. I can either select to backup manually or schedule the it to repeat after a specific period of time. I choose the former. I also choose to have the backup the data everytime I log on to my computer.

The last step of the proccess is to review all my choices. It looks good so it's time to see how this really works.

Actually backing up:

Running an item (A.K.A backing up data) seems to be simple. I select the item I just added, and click a big, blue "Play" button. Status information flashes in front of me and in about five seconds the application tells me that everything is done.

Since I can't believe that this program filtered my files, compressed them, logged onto my ftp and trasfered the compressed file in a few seconds, I have to check the file for myself. But in the folder I specified lies a zip file of 43 kBytes, containing 15-20 php files.

Restoring:

Restoring an item is almost as simple as backing it up. The software unfortunately has no button for restoring, so I have to do it from one of the menus. No big deal, but worth noting. Quality lies in the details.

I choose to restore the item to a folder on my hard drive and in a matter of seconds the folder is filled with my files.

When I later tried to exit the software, it closed and layed itself down in my system tray as expected.