Customer Reviews

BackUp MyPC

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

This product would do an emergency recovery disk up until Windows XP Service Pack 1 was released. If that is your goal, try Norton Ghost. Stomp could be more forthcoming with this news.

Product has done a nice job for me backing up my files to DVD.

Product is based on Vertias backup products which are industrial strength.

After my hard drive failed I really wanted to get good back up software. I read the reviews in magazines and online and they all said this was the best. Well, it isn't. Far from it. I have installed it and re-installed it about 5 times, called tech support and e-mailed them many times. Followed all their advice and changed all my configurations, hardware drivers, uninstalled other apps, tried different brands of CD-R and CD-RW etc. etc. Never could get it to work at all. I have a great coaster collection. I am very frustrated, but worst of all, I still don't have back up software!

I have a Dell 4000 notebook with Windows XP, plenty of RAM and my CD-RW is "supported" by the software, but it just won't work. A waste of money AND time!! Wish I could get my money back. My time is lost forever.

The software appeared not to be able to back up across multiple CDs, which is the only reason I had bought it. I then found in the documentation a line saying that some versions don't support this option, without any way to know whether mine did or not. Customer support via e-mail responded after 72 hours, with some suggestions that were irrelevant, such as running msconfig when they had already confirmed that I have Windows 2000, for which msconfig doesn't apply. Then I checked the list of supported drives and found that the Samsung CDRW/DVD that came standard with my Dell Latitude is NOT supported.

PLEASE, PLEASE check the list of supported drives BEFORE purchasing this software!!!!!

Backup MyPC comes with a fairly good manual and a colorful CD label. Now for the details.

Backup MyPC does not support unattended, scheduled or automatic backups to anything with a capacity that exceeds a recordable DVD. I do not have a tape drive and therefore was not able to evaluate how it performed with that device. When backing up one hard drive to another on my PC, Backup MyPC divides the backup into a maximum of DVD size segments requiring the operator to click OK to initiate the next backup segment. My 80 GB drive required sixteen incremental clicks in order to complete a single backup. Furthermore, Backup MyPC includes menu picks for my CD-RW drive, my compact flash interface and a file, it does not include a menu pick for backing up to an internal or removable IDE hard drive. A major omission.

A second weak area is recovery in the Windows XP environment. Backup MyPC does not come with a bootable CD suitable for disaster recovery. Should the operating system volume become unserviceable, the user must re-install Windows XP and Backup MyPC before restoring can be attempted. A major inconvenience.

The reviews of this product appear to have been conducted to determine how well the included features performed, but did not address important missing features needed for any general purpose backup software package.

If you can work within this program's limitations, you will probably be very happy. As for me, I am going to go with another backup program as soon as I can order it.

The packaging looks great, the reviews looked great. System requirements and backup devices listed on the box all looked great! Listed as compatible with all devices including Zip. We have two computers, one with a 250 Zip, the other with a 750 Zip. Both OS are Windows XP Home. All went well with the computer with the 250 Zip, but all failed with the computer with the 750 Zip. Kept getting error message "detected unexpected media removal" Back Up Failed. I continued to get this message, and there was no media removal. I contacted Tech support and they told me the 750 Zip is not compatible with their software. Why is that not stated on the systems requirements? This software is useless and I've wasted more $$$

I used it with a windows 98 SE pc.
It backed up my system fine, when choosing individual drives or folders or files.

One time, while backing up the ENTIRE pc, over 80 gigs of data across 3 hard drives, (on an old underpowered Celery 300), it hung up.
So I only gave it 4 stars.

Maybe it is slightly worse than the 4 stars I give it, after seeing other reviewer's writeups. But for my own experiences, it has worked rather well and it backups up real fast, using CDRW or CDR media.

I purchased BackupMyPC based on two glowing reviews, which told of the disaster recovery feature. That was the whole reason I
purchased the program. I install the product, and attempt to create a disaster recovery CD-ROM, and it tells me that it can't do that because Microsoft's SP1 has been installed on my WinXP
system.

I just went through having to reload WinXP, update off the Microsoft web site, then restore off my Microsoft backup file.

Just what did this product buy me when its disaster recovery
feature doesn't work? NOTHING!

Chris Shaker
cjshaker@shaker-net.com

BackupMyPC was unable to backup my 100 GB hard disk to a network drive. StompSoft customer's support said the problem was due to my machine even though I was able to use a competitors product to backup my system. I've deleted BackupMyPC from my system and will no longer do any business with StompSoft.

Freebie backup utilities can do a task that BackupMyPC cannot.

After backing up 16 DVDs and nearing the end I accidentally hit the eject button on the wrong drive. The program didn't ask me if that's what I meant to do--it simply ended! All tech support would say is they'd pass it to their programmers to consider in the future. Very shoddy design in my opinion. I tried to rebuild the catalog so I didn't have to redo hours of backup and after asking me to insert all 15 disks, it couldn't read the 16th--the one it shut down earlier, and so quit again. Tech support didn't even respond. I cannot get it to rename a DVD without reformatting and it insists on defaulting to its own naming system (though you can override it). Should have saved me time...instead cost me a LOT of time. I cannot recommend this program.

Back Up My PC (BUMP) is the latest generation of a tool formerly known as Veritas Backup Exec or Backup Exec Desktop. The primary
value (to me) of that entire line of tools is their ability to backup the ENTIRE C drive, and restore it onto a new hard drive after replacing a failed hard drive, without having to reinstall windows and all the applications. You just boot the system from the special restore floppies, and start the restore, and when it's done, your system is just the way it was when you backed it up. I used Backup Exec on a Win98SE box with a DAT tape drive for years, and TWICE succesfully restored my system after HD failures. (That was SO AWESOME!)

So, when I got my new WinXP box with a DVD+RW drive, I naturally wanted to continue to backup my system with software that could reliably restore it. BUMP's UI seems identical to the old Backup Exec, so I was hopeful it would be as good. So I bought a copy of BUMP and tried it.

WHAT A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT. The first time I ran BUMP, it told me that BUMP cannot backup and restore the version of WinXP SP1 that I have. (How many versions of WinXP SP1 are there?) BUMP clearly is NOT going to be my PC backup solution due to this problem.

Bump did offer to backup my data files onto my DVD, and so I tried that. When it got ready to start writing to the DBD, it spat out the brand new DVD+RW disk, saying it was media incompatible with my DVD drive. Of course, other DVD software has had no trouble writing on tht same media on my drive. Apparently my DVD drive is not one supported by BUMP. A friend who also uses BUMP used it on his PC to "format" my DVD+RW media, and then BUMP was able to write to it in my PC without compatibility complaints.

So, I conclude that BUMP is not compatible with WinXP SP1 nor with my EMPREX DVD+RW drive. I'm still looking for a good PC WinXP SP1 backup solution.