Genie Backup Manager Home is one of our top picks for backing up data. The Genie Backup Manager 8.0 costs $50 bucks per license, putting it on par with the price of many similar data backup programs.
Genie Backup Manager offers an easy to use interface that has many options. We will walk you through a setup so you can see all the features of this program with out having to install it yourself. The one down side I would say off the bat is you do not have an option to do a full image backup of your system. This means you are unable to backup the operating system and programs. However you can backup all your user settings, favorites, music, documents and all the usual items that most data backup programs offer.
Be sure to read our Data Backup Software chart to see a full list of data backup programs.
The Splash screen informs the user that there are several support tools available to them. Genie seems to have more support documentation and how to guides then most other software vendors.
The main interface gives you several options. The main ones are making a Backup, Restore or Disaster Recovery. Disaster Recovery is used to create a CD that you can boot from for use in doing a data recovery on a failed drive. Very nice little feature that most other data programs lack.
After you Choose the Backup option, you are presented with a choice of editing an existing backup or create a new backup job. In this case we would create a job as we have no backups setup at this time.
Now you will be choosing where to backup the data. As you see from the snap shot below you have the option of doing a backup over a lan/network, removable device including USB drives and hard drives, to an FTP location, CD/DVD and even an online option. The online option is an extra feature for those you purchase the upgrade. It’s a very good option if you want both a local and remote copy of your data. I have two copies of my data and most people really should.
Now that we selected were we are backing the data up to, we now get to choose what data we want to backup. It’s nice that they included a link to the Backup Tutorial at this stage as many novice users may not understand what they should select to have backed up. The MyProfile section includes all your personal documents from the My documents folder as well as the normal user settings that are custom to your account. If you select everything in this section, most people will be good.
After choosing your files and hitting the next button we are now prompted to select the type of backup we want to perform. In most cases you will be doing a full backup to start. You will have the option of adding on security to the file as well as compress it. If you add on a password for the backup it’s VITAL that you write it down some were in case you ever forget it. Personally I e-mail myself the passwords to a web based e-mail service.
The backup process for Genie Backup Manager is on par with many other data backup programs. We tested out around 500 MB or half a Gig’s worth of data. That is about a full CD. The backup took close to 7 minutes with the default compression. I would recommend you just use the default compression, this helps to save on storage and not slow the entire backup down more then you need to.
That about covers the program. All in all it’s a very good data backup program. I have no issues giving it two thumbs up. Some users may find it too be a little confusing. It’s not as easy to use as AutoSave Essentials but it’s definetly one of the better programs. The support documentation provided with Genie Backup Manger is very solid and should answer any questions an end user has.
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