kazmax
20-10-07, 08:22 PM
I purchased Drive Backup Pro 8.51 last weekend. Since then I have discovered 8 separate issues. I have already mentioned a couple of these in other threads, however I have just spent a couple of hours confirming all of the following and wish to bring these to the attention of the folks at Paragon so that they can be looked into.
I am using Drive Backup Pro 8.51 on a Windows XP Pro 64 bit PC.
1) Cyclic backup: Regardless of the choice of drives, the 'Next' button stays permanently disabled on the 'What to back up' screen. It is impossible for me to do cyclic backups as a result.
2) On the initial cyclic backup screen it is only possible to select one drive. Selecting any other drive causes the previously selected drive to be deselected. This is not very good when wanting to backup more than one drive (I can't use cyclic backups anyway because of the above, but if I could then being able to select only one drive feels like a backward step).
3) Right-click any scheduled job. Select Properties. Clicking 'OK' or 'Apply' causes an error popup - 'Error saving the contents of the page(s)'. It actually saves the detail because if you re-edit that job after clicking 'Cancel' then the previously entered data is what you wanted to save, but it presents this popup to annoy you.
4) Scheduled tasks - it is not possible to re-edit a task using the forms interface, you can only use a notepad editor. This isn't intuitive for a non-technical user.
5) Backup - choose destination - if folder name already exists you get an error message and cannot continue until you choose another new backup name. What's wrong with overwriting an existing backup if that's what you want to do?
6) Edit any *.PWL file. Within this file is a comment which relates to merging archives into one file - 'This function is not implemented yet: Merge archives into one archive'. What's the point of drawing attention to functionality which hasn't been implemented yet?
7) Add any script to the lower script pane of the schedule window. Highlight that script. Right-click and choose 'Schedule script', or click the 'Schedule Script' button. You get a popup advising 'Cannot schedule script ... because it already exists in Scripts'. I'm very confused - what's the point of the script pane if you can't ever schedule the script???? The real purpose of this script pane appears to be for script exclusion - place a script here so that you can never schedule it!
8) I don't understand the need for the 'Cyclic' backup option. I can schedule a job - if I happen to choose the same filename and location as a previous backup job, and don't check the 'Create random filename' option, why isn't Drive Backup Pro intelligent enough to figure that it's okay for it to overwrite a previous backup? Paragon seem to have gone to great lengths to confuse the user by offering straight backups and cyclic backups as two different options (and the fact that I can't actually use Cyclic backup is more than a bit frustrating).
I'm not listing this as an issue because it works as expected, but I've given up on scheduling backup jobs using the internal scheduler. I now use an external software utility to manage my scheduled backups, because at least I feel I have proper control over the backup job. With that external utility I have the ability to automatically delete the previously created backup files before Drive Backup Pro figures that it can't do the backup because the file/directory already exists. It's a pain in the butt having to do this, but at least I've overcome the problem.
Overall I'm feeling a bit disappointed that Drive Backup Pro 8.51 has so many apparent issues. I expect 1 or 2 issues in a new product - but 8 issues which could easily have been discovered with proper testing leaves a lot to be desired. It's a pity because I really like the new user interface and this product appears to be what I need. Because of these discovered issues I'm left wondering whether Drive Backup Pro has other potential issues which I haven't yet found, and whether I can rely upon it - I don't want to find that it cannot restore my hard disk if I experience a future catastrophe.
Andrew
I am using Drive Backup Pro 8.51 on a Windows XP Pro 64 bit PC.
1) Cyclic backup: Regardless of the choice of drives, the 'Next' button stays permanently disabled on the 'What to back up' screen. It is impossible for me to do cyclic backups as a result.
2) On the initial cyclic backup screen it is only possible to select one drive. Selecting any other drive causes the previously selected drive to be deselected. This is not very good when wanting to backup more than one drive (I can't use cyclic backups anyway because of the above, but if I could then being able to select only one drive feels like a backward step).
3) Right-click any scheduled job. Select Properties. Clicking 'OK' or 'Apply' causes an error popup - 'Error saving the contents of the page(s)'. It actually saves the detail because if you re-edit that job after clicking 'Cancel' then the previously entered data is what you wanted to save, but it presents this popup to annoy you.
4) Scheduled tasks - it is not possible to re-edit a task using the forms interface, you can only use a notepad editor. This isn't intuitive for a non-technical user.
5) Backup - choose destination - if folder name already exists you get an error message and cannot continue until you choose another new backup name. What's wrong with overwriting an existing backup if that's what you want to do?
6) Edit any *.PWL file. Within this file is a comment which relates to merging archives into one file - 'This function is not implemented yet: Merge archives into one archive'. What's the point of drawing attention to functionality which hasn't been implemented yet?
7) Add any script to the lower script pane of the schedule window. Highlight that script. Right-click and choose 'Schedule script', or click the 'Schedule Script' button. You get a popup advising 'Cannot schedule script ... because it already exists in Scripts'. I'm very confused - what's the point of the script pane if you can't ever schedule the script???? The real purpose of this script pane appears to be for script exclusion - place a script here so that you can never schedule it!
8) I don't understand the need for the 'Cyclic' backup option. I can schedule a job - if I happen to choose the same filename and location as a previous backup job, and don't check the 'Create random filename' option, why isn't Drive Backup Pro intelligent enough to figure that it's okay for it to overwrite a previous backup? Paragon seem to have gone to great lengths to confuse the user by offering straight backups and cyclic backups as two different options (and the fact that I can't actually use Cyclic backup is more than a bit frustrating).
I'm not listing this as an issue because it works as expected, but I've given up on scheduling backup jobs using the internal scheduler. I now use an external software utility to manage my scheduled backups, because at least I feel I have proper control over the backup job. With that external utility I have the ability to automatically delete the previously created backup files before Drive Backup Pro figures that it can't do the backup because the file/directory already exists. It's a pain in the butt having to do this, but at least I've overcome the problem.
Overall I'm feeling a bit disappointed that Drive Backup Pro 8.51 has so many apparent issues. I expect 1 or 2 issues in a new product - but 8 issues which could easily have been discovered with proper testing leaves a lot to be desired. It's a pity because I really like the new user interface and this product appears to be what I need. Because of these discovered issues I'm left wondering whether Drive Backup Pro has other potential issues which I haven't yet found, and whether I can rely upon it - I don't want to find that it cannot restore my hard disk if I experience a future catastrophe.
Andrew