Hi folks.
I googled 'free backup software review' and via I think 'geeksquad' saw high marks for Toucan but never found an actual review. Came to Toucan home page on portableapps, and did not see a full listing of the features I seek... only a ref to read the Manual if not answered here.... except cannot find the manual, looks like I would have to install Toucan before I can follow that.
My situation is: I have a Notebook with WinXP and need a reliable backup manager, so if my 160GB internal HD breaks, I can RELIABLY RESTORE ALL MY DATA (not OS or Apps) My main External Backup device is a 1 Terrabyte USB Drive, NTFS, which already contains many large multimedia files/folders previously archived - so any backup program I install, must NOT format or overwrite existing files
I would expect any Backup Manager to support VERIFY as a final part of a Backup operation - but see no mention of this for Toucan. I want my Main Backup Profile to make an initial Complete Backup of ALL user specified folders, and from then on, Incremental Backup - typically a vary large 120GB of Data. But without Verify - how can you KNOW a 120GB backup is secure ?
I would expect a Backup Manager to maintain LOG and perhaps CATALOG files, (with user specified detail in order to control log filesize) so user has record of what is backed up/when, as aid to finding a file or files to restore.
As a secondary requirement, I want to be able to be able to backup or restore just single files or folders.
For convenience I want to install onto my Notebook so Portability of the program not essential, as in event of a HD crash, seems safer to reinstall OS and all Apps freshly.
Can anyone advise from the above, if this, or another bakup program is more suitable ?
I spent some time trawling cnet, pcworld, pcmag, other sites, looking for proper reviews of free backup software, but failed to find much. Most google searches produced mere repeats of product literature, not independant reviews.
Grateful if anyone can post links to any good Backup Software Review sites that do independant reviews and not biased towards commercial products. Thanks all.
Visit the Community page
Join our forums
Subscribe to our email newsletter
Subscribe with RSS
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on LinkedIn
Follow us on Twitter
Follow us on Mastodon
Follow us on BlueSky
be honest I don't think Toucan is what you are looking for, as you point out there is currently no verify feature of Toucan, to be honest no-one has asked about it before. As for log files Toucan does produce a detailed output of what is being backed up, which you can optionally save, I am not sure what else you expect here? Backup of single files is supported, restoring single files is not, although the files that Toucan produces are fully compatible with 7zip which allows you to both test archives and to extract single files.
As for good review sites I am afraid I cannot help, perhaps someone else in the community will be able to chime in.
Hope that helps!