Altaro is raffling 15 licenses of their nifty backup tool for desktops and laptops. Each license is worth US$37. I tested Oops!Backup for a few days and was quite content with the results. I am a big fan of Continuous Data Protection (CDP), not only because the backup intervals are significantly shorter than with conventional backup tools, but also because configuration and handling are much easier. In this post, I will outline the CDP features of Oops!Backup and, in my next post, I will discuss the tool’s ReverseDelta technology and its suitability for laptop backups.
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The name Oops!Backup fits well for a CDP backup solution because it protects users from their own mistakes. If you accidentally delete or overwrite a text document on which you have been working for the last few hours, then yesterday’s backup won’t be helpful. Oops!Backup secures user data every hour by default, but you can also configure it to check for changed files every five minutes. This makes the tool a "near CDP program" , the difference being that real CDP backup solutions save new data immediately.
In my opinion, five-minute intervals are enough for client computers. In my test, this interval worked fine and didn’t slow down my computer. Actually, one of the disadvantages of conventional backup tools is that they slow down the computer during backups because they have to scan the file system for changed files.
In contrast, Oops!Backup listens to Windows file system events in order to detect file changes. Thus, when the time of the backup is reached, Oops!Backup already knows which files have been modified and only these are accessed during the backup process. In most cases, the backup is finished after one or two seconds.
What I like most about CDP solutions is that you don’t have to mess with incremental or differential backups. There is just one backup job, and that’s it. This not only makes the backup job configuration easier, it also tremendously simplifies restoring files. To restore a file, you only have to select a snapshot and you will get the file’s state at that point in time. If you work with incremental backups, you have to find the corresponding backup job first. If you don’t know when the file was last changed, this can be quite time consuming.
Moreover, with differential and incremental backups, if you have to restore all files in case of a disaster recovery, you will also restore files that have been deleted deliberately since the last full backup. Hence, you will never get the exact state before the disaster. Oops!Backup, on the other hand, removes deleted files automatically from the latest backup. Therefore, any snapshot represents the exact state of the file system at that point in time.
If you’d like to have the chance to win one of the 15 Oops!Backup licenses, please send an email to
with the subject line
Oops!Backup.
The deadline for entering this contest is March 8, 2010.
This seem like a great app. Always wanted a copy of this software. I entered to contest for this I hope I win.
Great site you have by the way. Thanks for the great review on Oops Backup.
Good job Micheal, I have been on your site a few times and I always leave with a gem. I only thought its fair to deposit my comment as a way of showing gratitude. Thanks for this wonderful review on the Oops Backup. I will enter the contest to try and win a Oops!Backup license…