Hi!
I really love the idea of Toucan. It's simple easy to use, gives access to saved/copied files even if the backup program is not at hand that's what I was looking for!
I've run a few tests and have to say, for now, I'll stick with DriveImage XML (tough it does not give the easy file access).
Reasons:
1. It's slooowww. I run Toucan under a freshly installed XP on a laptop. I have run a backup job of a drive (mirror update, checked Timestamps, attributes, read only) , about 10GB of files. It took 4 hours. (DriveImage took 20 minutes.) I have a lot of write protected files on the drive (windows xp installation files for custom installation cds). It seems it takes Toucan a lot of time to try and write error messages because it cannot write the time stamps. - After first run, I changed 1 file and added another. I excluded the "Recycle" folder (silly to include it on the initial run). It took Toucan nearly 2 hours to complete the job. It did not delete the Recycle-folder on the backup.
2. Toucan seems to slow down the computer significantly. During Backup, I only had Firefox and Explorer running. Any new screen took a loooong time. Any explorer operation took a long time. In particualr, getting back to Toucan Gui und progress window needed a lot of patience.
3. It would be nice to have timed jobs running automatically every day (like windows planned tasks). Any way to set this up? (I amnot familiar with scripts etc, is this a way to do it?)
4. Is there any way to include folders from different drives to one backup/mirror? (Windows Setting on C: and documents on D:)
5. I love the DriveImage XML to be plugged in into a boot CD. Also to image the OS-drive. Would be a perfect feature for Toucan, wouldn't it? Imaging, boot, and easily accessible automated backup, would be the ultimate backup tool. Wouldn't it?
Keep on going. If the speed issue can be fixed Toucan will be my first choice.