Customer Reviews

CMS BounceBack Ultimate 9.2 Backup and Instant Recovery Software

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

BounceBack Ultimate with Instant PC Recovery was a super smart purchase. After I received the software, I cleaned up and optimized my PC before installing. Following installation, I immediately made a complete system backup on my external hard drive and maintained the backup with "continuous data protection". Several month later, I got the dreaded BSOD but was able to restore my system quickly and completely with the component "Rescue Disk".

BounceBack Express, Version 8, came with my External Hard Drive but the software is woefully inadequate; it allows you to backup data only, not the entire system. If you crash, and wind up with a defective drive, the full system backup, stored on the external hard drive, can still be used to operate the pc until you fix or replace the drive and restore your system on it. This purchase saved my bacon! I am actually writing this review on the pc that crashed and with the system that was saved.

Here's a tip: after you purchase the BounceBack Ultimate Version 9.1, go to the CMS website, register the software, and immediately get the free download update to Version 9.2. It contains some post production fixes. This software really works!

UPDATE: It has been one year since my review and I am still pleased with this product. I have since upgraded my software to Windows 7 and have learned that the original "rescue disk" doesn't work with this OS. I needed to purchase the new "rescue disk" for under $10 ... well worth the investment since the heart of the program works with Windows 7.

The CMS BounceBack products don't get all the techie notice they should. I have used backup software from other big name software houses and have been totally disappointed and sometimes distressed. BounceBack Ultimate performs flawlessly...and quite easily as well, producing 100% reliable backups of your valued data. I initially used the CMS BounceBack Data Transfer software product to clone or ghost my Boot drive onto a larger capacity drive. I was so impressed I tried their BounceBack Ultimate backup suite. I highly recommend CMS BounceBack products.

The backup sets created with BounceBack Ultimate 9.2 are fast, accurate, and they appear in the identical format they're in on your native HD. For me, with dozens of GB of video and still image files to back up, retaining the original file formats is a wonderful thing. It allows me to go to my backup sets and see the images and text files exactly as they are on my native HD. Few other backup programs will do that.

This is a really excellent program. I'd love to give it five stars, but I'll have to withold part of a star because of some unlucky experience with the CMS email support - not the telephone support. That short story follows:

Using BounceBack, I was always able to make selective backups - "backup sets" - to my external backup HD (which is USB 2.0, by the way - so BB works just fine with USB 2.0). But scheduled backups would not run, no matter how I tried to schedule them. I spent quite a few hours on these attempts. Over a three day time period I had three email exchanges with BB support. It was obvious that the support person hadn't really read my emails, so he recommended that I do several of the things I had already done, and had told him I'd done. That was annoying and discouraging - but it's not a reason to avoid BounceBack. I probably just had bad luck. A support telephone number is provided, and I got excellent telephone support.

Telephone support was prompt, courteous, and very effective. The problem with my backup sets was blindingly simple - I did not know that the BB "Control Screen" needs to be closed (NOT just minimized !!) for the scheduled backup to run. Now that I know that, scheduled backup sets run normally.

There are two other "wrinkles" when doing backups - very small things, which aren't really problems:
(1) to do a full system backup you must have a backup drive which you're willing to format, losing any data that you have on the drive. This wasn't a problem for me, since I had purchased a new 1.5 TB external drive specifically for this purpose.
(2) when doing selective backup "sets" you must first make a new folder on your backup drive, dedicated to the backup set(s) you wish to make. This new folder must be made before you open the BB "Control screen". This is something most of us would think of without prompting, but I had to experiment a little before I discovered it.

I haven't yet done a Restore from a backup set or a system backup, but I know that all my essential files and folders are backed up, in one place, in their original file formats. There is no 100% fail safe guarantee against data loss, but this comes as pretty close. I'm very pleased with BounceBack Ultimate 9.2.

I purchased this quite some months ago and fortunately didn't get around to installing it right away. However, having just recently purchased and loaded up an expensive new laptop (now running 64 bit Win 7 Ultimate) I thought it was about time ... but since that machine was busy with a disk in it's drive I decided to install it on my older (now backup) W7 32 bit machine first. The installation crashed the machine ... blue screen of death ... serious error ... etc. I was able to bring it up again (with the message that it had recovered from a serious error) but there's not a chance I'm letting this program anywhere near my new machine. Frequent backups (to multiple drives) and keeping track of my program disks are much less hard on MY system than taking the chance of seeing that screen on the new computer. I would give it negative stars if I could; recovery software is not supposed to kill your computer.

The product is user freindly, and have been very good to me Knowing that my system is backed up makes me feel at more secure.

....this software is TOXIC!!! It's cost me one four year old mid-level Dell, almost it's replacement's hard drive as well, and a new 640 gb HP pocket drive.

First problem much my own stupid fault...trust...I allowed BB to break a RAID 1 mirror. But after that it's all on CMS.

No recovery from that one.....left me running my primary desktop on an Iomega portable hard drive which it turned into C: and which no amount of (experienced) registry edits would allow me to fix without a badly crippled computer.

Wrote that one off, decided it was too hard to fix as it was time to upgrade the desktop with something reduced footprint anyway, and bought a new HP S5580. After setting that up the way I wanted I cloned the C: drive as a hedge and then installed and ran BB using an HP Pocket drive as the USB back-up.

That's when I really realized it wasn't me....more random drive letter changes, weird partitions, strange start-up settings, and it hosed the new pocket drive completely as far as being recognized from any other USB port. Thanks to my justified paranoia I had an OS drive clone to work with. A couple hours of back and forth copy (thanks Apricorn!) and every thing but the cooked pocket drive was back to just fine.

One other observation/strong caution.....BounceBack subverts Windows System Restore! And you'll never realize it until you try to use it 'cause it appears intact.

I never got this software to install. It runs off the CD when I startup but crashes my system when it attempts to reformat my Black Belt portable hard drive. This is very dangerous because my hard drive is failing and I can not back it up. Documentation on installation is useless (none existent). Can not determine if the operating documentation is any good because never got to use it. Sent an email to customer support and got a customer number and nothing else yet (weekend). I do not want to become their software developer. Going to try ACORNIS instead.
Do not waste your money on this software unless you enjoy stress and frustration. I also would give it a negative rating. The Amazon ratings are misleading because if buy this and it crashes your system you can not even get your full purchase price back. What an insult - it crashes your system and you have to pay for the experience. Amazon wants you to buy it so they have these high ratings. It's a negative rating.

It's easy to install. Works well for backup. However, doesn't seem as flexible as older one I had - disc got scratched so ordered this one. Older one was easier to setup for multiple backups.

I had a very recent occasion to restore a hard disk with its OS W7.BBack Ulti v.11 worked perfectly well.I am happy.
And Amazon is very serious.

Perhaps the very best of this type software.

Much easier to use than Norton by a long ways