The Interface :

Without a doubt one of WinBackup's strengths is the clean, simple, uncluttered GUI. Here's a look at the main panels and what they let you achieve.

Organize your Backups
The first step is to create a "job". Any number of jobs can be created and uniquely named so you may have a job that back up your bank details, one that backs up your music collection and one that backs up your entire hard drive. Each of these jobs can be scheduled individually to run at specific times and frequencies and be set to use specific security settings. For example you'd probably want to have full drive backups running while you sleep rather than have them cluttering away in the background while you work. From the panel you see below you can set specific jobs to be run on a daily, weekly or monthly basis and on preselected days at preselected times.

Running any of these jobs outside of its schedules parameters is as simple as highlighting it and clicking the "Run Backup" command visible in the lower left hand corner of the panel (below).

Add/Remove Files
Next you need to select the files you want to back up and again this has been made incredible simple. The window opens in the familiar two panel format and drives and directories that are selected on the left can have specific sub-directories, files and folders included or omitted simply by selecting or deselecting them in the right hand panel. The "User Data" options in the lower part of the left hand panel allow personal settings, email data and so on to be included with minimal fuss.

Advanced Search Capabilities
As you've no doubt guessed the "Search" option allows you to perform advanced searches for specific files or, more importantly, file types. By searching out only files with specific file extensions it's simplicity to gather together like files, perhaps your photos or clipart or maybe your MP3 collection or other media files. The search function adds greatly to the flexibility and power of WinBackup.

Backup Settings
The backup settings panel allows you to select whether all files are overwritten or alternatively you can overwrite only those files that have been altered since the last backup was performed. It would have been nice to see an option for variable compression ratios here rather than a simple on/off radio button. Another powerful feature is the ability to specify files to be excluded from the backup and as the example states you could enter "exe, dll.bmp" to exclude all executables, bitmaps and dynamic link libraries. Perhaps more usefully you could enter "tmp" and exclude all temporary files.

It's important that you don't select the option to "Delete Temporary Files when Done" if you plan on archiving only new and modified files in future as this is used to reference the file details and identify which have been changed.

Backup Security Settings
This is possible on of the best features WinBackup brings with it, and that's the option to protect your backup data with a password. Further, you can actually encrypt the backup data using either 128bit or 256bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) algorithms. For anyone interested that's 3.4 x 1038 possible 128-bit keys or 1 x 1077 possible 256-bit keys. Or to look at it differently, if a code cracking machine was available that could sample 255 keys per second it'd take that machine 149 thousand-billion (149 trillion) years to crack a 128-bit AES key!

Of course this level of encryption comes at the expense of speed and by far the quickest backups are performed with no encryption, and when the backup is compressed this unencrypted data is probably difficult enough to open to be suitable for all but the most sensitive of data.

CD Settings
As you'd expect there's the option to burn the backup directly to CD or DVD using your CD-RW/DVD drive but here the options are particularly limiting with little flexibility on offer. For most people this won't be a problem as their brief will be simply to burn a backup and nothing else no matter how it's achieved but for those with demands any more rigorous it'll probably be better to create the backup on your HDD and handle the burn from there using your proprietary software.

Restore Files
After opening a backup file you can restore selected files with a single click. WinBackup also lets you open a files or folder directly without restoring it, or restore files to an alternate location for easy access. The search capabilities can also be very useful when restoring files with a specific extension. (For example, you could restore all word documents after a script virus attack.). The thing I'd like to see added here is the option to make a bootable and self extracting system restore CD simply because as it stands you can't access the restore function unless you can boot windows in the first place which isn't always the case unfortunately. The same search functionality available from backup panel is also available in the restore panel which makes it possible to restore only specific file categories such as DLLs or bitmaps etc.

Even when restoring files WinBackup maintains a level of control over what's put back. The option to replace all files, no files or only files older than those contained in the backup makes for a smoother process.

Viewing Files

To view files you've archived during a backup you simply need to open WinBackup and view them through the "Restore Files" panel. The full file list and directory structure can be viewed as normal from here and individual files can be open and viewed as though they were normal, uncompressed files either with their associated software or in the case of folders in Windows File Manager. This is true only for files smaller than 25MB however as anything larger will need to be restored fully to a chosen location first before it can be viewed.