Backup Platinum Review, May 31, 2005

Don't you just love it when something works the first time, just the way it's supposed to without even a glitch? That's what happened to me when I tried Backup Platinum for the first time.

This surprised me - a lot - because I had so much trouble trying to get Norton Ghost to do the same thing that I finally gave up. Where did I go wrong? I simply couldn't convince Norton Ghost to write the backed up data to my CDR drive.

But I started up Backup Platinum and found it to be well designed and well documented. Backup Platinum smoothly transitioned me through simple questions to start my first backup in 2 minutes flat, without even reading any directions!

Right away I noticed that Backup Platinum did one thing for me that Ghost didn't -Backup Platinum made it really easy for me to back up my email. I do a lot of online business transactions through my email, and I would sure hate to lose it!

But my Outlook Express folders had grown to be so numerous and large that I could not longer easily back them up. With Backup Platinum I didn't even have to figure out where the OE folders were. Backup Platinum anticipated my desire to back up the email, and made it simple for me. This is the hallmark of great software, in my humble opinion.

Backup Platinum recognized my CD-Rom drive, didn't need to drop back to DOS like Ghost always seemed to do. Not only that, but Backup Platinum works on a LAN too, and can be used to synchronize files on two different computers. You can use Backup Platinum to synchronize your laptop files with your main computer.

I also noticed that you can set up a backup schedule, and totally automate the process, so you don't have to worry about it in the future. If you're running Windows XP (or NT, 2000, 2003), you can run Backup Platinum as a service, and then it requires no human intervention whatsoever!

I have a 60 GB hard drive, and it's pretty full at the moment! So as you can imagine my folders are often too big to back up on one single CD, even using compression. Backup Platinum can span across multiple CDs or DVDs if the data you are backing up is too big to fit on one disk.

I didn't need to read the help file to use Backup Platinum, but I did anyway, just for fun (Ok, I am a little strange sometimes!) I noticed this help files was extremely well-written and laid out logically, something that I really appreciate.

Just to make sure I didn't forget any great features you might be interested in, I'll also mention that you can use Backup Platinum to synchronize or store data via remote FTP.

Backup Platinum will compress your data into ZIP files, and password-protect them if you want. If you are concerned about security, you can use Backup Platinum's strong 128-bit Blowfish encryption. Backup Platinum does verify the backups via CRC and has many, many other great features too numerous to mention in this review. Plus it works, did I mention that? - it really works!

Backup Platinum is a great utility for heavy-duty backups. I would highly recommend Backup Platinum to anyone who needs real assurance that important data is backed up safely and securely.

The Great Mind Review Team
Great Mind Inc