Backups that works!
There is a company called StorageCraft that has a backup program I have been meaning to try for a while now. I finely signed up for their demos and partner program only to see them listed a few times from some of my vendors.
So, a few weeks ago I put it to a simple test. Backup a system, and restore it. It worked just as I expected. Then last weekend I was working on a Server. It was a Small Business Server that didn't have any of the service packs installed. I thought, well now is a good time to test it again. So I made a backup of the system before I did any updates. Then installed all the updates, and as luck would have it, everything worked.
I put the system back in service and haven't heard any bad news. So I didn't get to really test the software in a real world test. Well this weekend (yes Mothers day weekend) I had a workstation giving me problems. I thought I would again use the Software. I made a backup, then reloaded the workstation. Everything is working great on the reload (which is good b/c I thought there might have been a hardware issue).
So again I didn't get to really test the software. It has given me more choices when working on computers though. But I really wanted to test the software, put it though it's paces. Well Luckily I did install the 30day trial on one of my Virtual Servers. So I decided it was time to do a restore.
I shutdown the Virtual server made a copy of my server hard drive (since it is virtual, it is just a simple as doing a file copy). Then booted off the ShadowProtect CD. It loaded up, complete with Nic card. Took a little bit to get a drive mapped over so I could see where I was storing my backups, but once I got that going, the restore was simple and WORKED.
One of the best parts of ShadowProtect is how it backup's and restores. You can set it to do a full backup, then incremental every hour during business hours. That's not the best part though, when you restore, you only select the time of the last backup you want to restore. It will then do all the work for you. In the past to restore an incremental backup you would restore the last full, then each backup till the date/time you wanted. That's a lot of work. With ShadowProtect, it was just a few minutes (about 45) and I was backup and running just like before.
I have not put it though every test I can think of yet, nor have I played with all the advance features, but it does work, it is simple to use, and it is my backup of choice from now on!