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 Synchronize! Pro X - 6.0.1make bootable system backups & sync files |
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switching to QRecall 
- Version: 6.0.1, 5/3/2008 11:03AM PST
(4 of 4 users found this comment useful)
bljacob
As with other posters, I'm not thrilled with the software ... I bought a license several versions back; it never quite did exactly what I needed, but it was good enough. My set-up seemed simple enough: three laptops and an airport network, but for whatever reason it didn't like anything I tried. So I just used it to back up the important laptop [ mine :) ] on local removable storage.
When Leopard and Time Machine were announced, I went out and got a 1TB wireless NASD, set it up in my basement, and figured my problems were solved. Yeah, brilliant: Apple got rid of 3rd party NASD support in Time Machine, so I've been using back-door tricks to make that kinda work. For the past week, even that has been failing (repeatable system panic requiring reboot on my laptop, though my wife's laptop is still chugging along fine). Also, I've never been thrilled that Time Machine won't let me configure it to backup just once per day, so I looked into upgrading Synchronize! Pro. Two things:
- The Synchronize! Pro license is $99 *per machine* ... you can't buy one license and backup multiple household computers. You *can* run the software on a second (but not third) machine if you use it manually, i.e. you can have a human-driven backup, but you can't have the software autonomously run at 3am every morning, on more than one computer. My guess is that the "parasiteware" described by a previous poster is monitoring that.
- The latest version of Synchronize! Pro failed to talk to my NASD, just like Time Machine -- although, unlike Time Machine, it didn't cause a panic, just an error message. Thumbs up on that front.
So I spent the morning looking for alternatives. I was surprised that I found one: QRecall (currently running in demo mode, but I'll almost certainly buy a license) is currently backing up my 30GB user space, as I type this, which is remarkable for two reasons:
1. Both Time Machine and Synchronize! Pro balked at the NASD, as mentioned. (though Finder mounts it just fine ... go figure) QRecall has had no problems yet. More importantly ...
2. When Time Machine backed up any more than a few MB of data at a time, it made my laptop completely unusable. For instance, when initialized, it did a full backup of my entire machine (~75GB), and though the backup succeeded, it took *three full days* (over 65 hours) during which I could not use the machine for anything else. Same thing for my wife's machine and my kids' machine. This is one of the reasons I wanted to configure it to run at 3am instead of every 15 minutes. In contrast, QRecall has been going for 3 hours, 40 minutes, has transferred 8.4 GB, and I've been using the laptop to surf the web, read email, edit a Pages doc, and even run a CAD program to design circuit boards (Eagle, via X11). Dude! That's more than twice the bandwidth of TIme Machine *and* it doesn't drag down the rest of the machine.
The QRecall license is $40 and lets you put the software on all machines in your household, no restrictions on use. I'm sold. (and, no, I've got no connections to any of the various software companies implicated)
When Leopard and Time Machine were announced, I went out and got a 1TB wireless NASD, set it up in my basement, and figured my problems were solved. Yeah, brilliant: Apple got rid of 3rd party NASD support in Time Machine, so I've been using back-door tricks to make that kinda work. For the past week, even that has been failing (repeatable system panic requiring reboot on my laptop, though my wife's laptop is still chugging along fine). Also, I've never been thrilled that Time Machine won't let me configure it to backup just once per day, so I looked into upgrading Synchronize! Pro. Two things:
- The Synchronize! Pro license is $99 *per machine* ... you can't buy one license and backup multiple household computers. You *can* run the software on a second (but not third) machine if you use it manually, i.e. you can have a human-driven backup, but you can't have the software autonomously run at 3am every morning, on more than one computer. My guess is that the "parasiteware" described by a previous poster is monitoring that.
- The latest version of Synchronize! Pro failed to talk to my NASD, just like Time Machine -- although, unlike Time Machine, it didn't cause a panic, just an error message. Thumbs up on that front.
So I spent the morning looking for alternatives. I was surprised that I found one: QRecall (currently running in demo mode, but I'll almost certainly buy a license) is currently backing up my 30GB user space, as I type this, which is remarkable for two reasons:
1. Both Time Machine and Synchronize! Pro balked at the NASD, as mentioned. (though Finder mounts it just fine ... go figure) QRecall has had no problems yet. More importantly ...
2. When Time Machine backed up any more than a few MB of data at a time, it made my laptop completely unusable. For instance, when initialized, it did a full backup of my entire machine (~75GB), and though the backup succeeded, it took *three full days* (over 65 hours) during which I could not use the machine for anything else. Same thing for my wife's machine and my kids' machine. This is one of the reasons I wanted to configure it to run at 3am instead of every 15 minutes. In contrast, QRecall has been going for 3 hours, 40 minutes, has transferred 8.4 GB, and I've been using the laptop to surf the web, read email, edit a Pages doc, and even run a CAD program to design circuit boards (Eagle, via X11). Dude! That's more than twice the bandwidth of TIme Machine *and* it doesn't drag down the rest of the machine.
The QRecall license is $40 and lets you put the software on all machines in your household, no restrictions on use. I'm sold. (and, no, I've got no connections to any of the various software companies implicated)
Trouble with Parallels - Version: 6.0.1, 5/3/2008 12:09AM PST
(1 of 1 users found this comment useful)
mario3
The new version has an issue with Parallels (or viceversa). If Parallels (latest verrsion) is running the Mac hangs. With the previous version 5.1.3 only Syncronize used to hang, now the OSX hangs. It looks like Syncronize! cannot copy the virtual Windows disk if Parallels is using it.
Older versions were OK.
Other than this problem it is the usual excellent backup and sync program
Older versions were OK.
Other than this problem it is the usual excellent backup and sync program
I also use it, and recommend it to clients with laptops for "bootable" backup purposes. Synchronize Pro can be configured to do a bootable backup to an external firewire or usb drive, in the background, whenever that drive is connected and mounts. It will trigger the backup script to run when the drive becomes available. If the hard drive in their laptop fails, they can boot off of the external backup and be back immediately - without having to RESTORE anything. Also, if the external drive purchased has a 2.5" SATA notebook drive inside, you can install the drive in place of the bad drive.
I've tried several other products, but most leave one important feature out here or there. Synchronize Pro, with the addition of email notification, now has all the features I use for various types of backups. I highly recommend it.