Everyone hates backing up. It's boring and complicated. You have to decide whether to back everything up (Windows, settings, registry, programs, data, the lot) or just those files you've created like documents, spreadsheets and photographs: if you jump that way, you have to have all the original system and program discs (and all the registration information and serial numbers) to hand when it comes to re-building your PC.

It's also potentially dangerous. What happens if you rely on a backup that doesn't work? What happens if you mistakenly overwrite good data with bad data? Sometimes it just seems easier to stick your photos on Flickr, keep your documents in Dropbox and cross your fingers.

One of the alternatives is to use a single program to handle all of your disk-and-data-related tasks, which is where Perfect Image 12 Backup & Protect Suite comes in. Using a single, unified interface you're able to create a recovery disc on CD, DVD or USB, backup and restore an entire drive as well as partitions, individual files and folders. This version also includes Disk Copy & Clean which lets you clone an entire drive, move it to a new PC and scrub everything that was stored on the original.

Perfect Image 12 Backup & Protect Suite uses ‘virtual operations' as a way of reassuring users. Essentially this allows you to perform a series of tasks (creating a new partition, renaming a disk volume, scheduling a backup and so on) without actually executing them. Then, when you're ready you can review the tasks using the View Changes feature and decide whether to apply them or not.

The tabbed interface works well throughout, allowing you to move easily between checking disks, looking at scheduled tasks, managing disk images and consulting the Help (which turns out to be the same as the printed manual).

Perfect Image 12 Backup & Protect Suite relies on wizards to do the heavy lifting, which is no bad thing. Thus, quite sophisticated features such as creating a secure partition where you can keep backup images or verifying the integrity of an existing backup - or even using the one-button copy wizard to clone an entire drive - use familiar Windows-style dialogues that walk you through the process.

Given the amount of jargon involved, it'd be nice to see something that engages the uncertain user a bit more than the bald ‘Key Benefits and Technical Highlights' section in the manual: the tooltips, for example, could deliver information like this instead of mainly repeating what's already on the screen.

In addition, while the Recovery Media Builder wizard is an important part of Perfect Image 12 Backup & Protect Suite, the way it ‘explains' what's going to happen is a nonsense: PC professionals may know what Win-PE is (a minimal Win32 OS with limited services, the PE standing for ‘pre-installation') but ordinary humans won't. Finally, the fact that you can only create secure partitions specifically for backing up disk images, rather than just ‘ordinary' partitions, feels like an omission.

Verdict
Perfect Image 12 Backup & Protect Suite is a good effort. By combining so many backup-related features into a single program, Avanquest undoubtedly makes it more likely that you'll initiate and then stick to a good backup routine. But by not finding a way to circumvent the jargon or explain the inherent complexities in a more approachable way, it misses a trick.

Company: Avanquest

Contact: 01962 835053

Tags: backup disk copy microsoft windows flickr dropbox disk image personal computer windows