Back in January when I wrote about Automatic WordPress Backup, Andy K. from CloudBerry Lab popped up in the comments on the cross-post to the WordPress Asylum site asking why I had recommended S3Fox over his company’s product, CloudBerry S3 Explorer. (For the simple enough reason that S3Fox was the first product I’d come across, and worked as a Firefox plugin.)

It seemed to me that I’d heard the name “CloudBerry” before, so I went and checked my collection of backup bookmarks. There, indeed, was CloudBerry Online Backup, so I arranged to download a copy and then talk to Andy about it.

Incidentally, a CloudBerry is not a relation of the BlackBerry. Cloudberries are real fruits that grow in northern climates—like Russia, where CloudBerry Lab is located. Andy explained that he wanted a business name with the word “cloud” in it, but hates made-up names.

CloudBerry Online Backup is not an online backup service like Mozy, Carbonite, or my sometime clients Spare Backup. Instead, CloudBerry provides a simple software front-end to automate and manage backing up to and restoring from your Amazon S3 account.

Unlike S3 itself, CloudBerry Online Backup is simple and user-friendly. The welcome screen gives you two simple options: set up backup plan and restore backup plan:

There are some suggested backup plans built in: My Internet Bookmarks (for people who haven’t started using a service like Delicious), My Pictures, and My Documents. But you can choose to back up any folders you want, on any drive—including your network drives. As I’ve mentioned before, not all online backup tools can even see your network drives, or anything at all besides your C:\ drive. This has as much to do with business models as technology, as Andy pointed out during our phone conversation. Since CloudBerry is selling software, not storage space, they have no motivation to restrict the source of your backup data. It’s Amazon you’ll be paying for storage, not CloudBerry, and Amazon bases prices for its S3 service on a combination of the space you use and the frequency with which you upload and download files, not how many different computers or users are putting their data into your account.

When you set up your backup job, CloudBerry prompts you to choose an Amazon S3 account:

Just in case you don’t have one yet, there’s a link so you can set one up. They also walk you through the signup process in detail on their blog. (The blog is on Blogger, but you can’t have everything. This blog was on Blogger for years.)

CloudBerry also has a handy monitor to show you how much Amazon storage you’re using. And as of the latest build, you can delete files you no longer want from your S3 backup by right-clicking on the file name in the “Backup Storage” tab and selecting “delete.”

As you can see from this snapshot, I chose a fairly small directory for my test backup. The real issue with any kind of online backup, no matter where you are storing it, is upload speeds. You can both encrypt and compress backups with CloudBerry, but nevertheless, it pays to exercise some judgment and be selective about which files you back up.

Subsequent backups (which you can schedule or run manually) will only back up files that have been changed. You can choose a number of versions to save or a length of time to keep old backups.

That said, the upload went quite speedily, and I was able to see my files in CloudBerry’s browser window. You can restore and delete files from there through the contextual (right-click) menu, or use the “restore” button from the welcome screen. Either method gets you to the same restore wizard:

For my test file, I chose “latest version,” though as it was a file I hadn’t changed between backups, it didn’t really matter. I restored it to a different directory just so I could make sure it really was being restored. Yep: it worked just fine.

These are the strengths of CloudBerry Online Backup: it’s easy, and it works. It’s also got a decent feature set, one Andy’s team is slowly expanding in response to user requests. The software retails for $29.99, both for the regular version and the Windows Home Server version. You’ll also be paying Amazon for your storage space. On the other hand, Amazon is charging 16.5 cents per GB here in Northern California; since signing up in January I’ve incurred $0.25 in charges.

If you’re a blogger who will write about the software, you can get a free license for CloudBerry Online Backup. I still have to go collect mine.

Andy also offered me 3 free licenses to give away. The first three people who post a comment to the blog explaining what they would back up on S3 using CloudBerry will get them.

A good two months ago—or perhaps not so good, from his point of view—the long-suffering Richard Krueger of SS|PR contacted me about GoodSync Enterprise, the new corporate version of  GoodSync Pro, a consumer tool that’s been around since 2006 but about which I hadn’t written before. (So much software, so little time.) It was a good press release: nobody was excited, and the quote from a VP contained relevant information. I was particularly struck by this passage:

Extremely flexible, GoodSync Enterprise can intelligently recognize storage devices and tie specific jobs to specific USB disks; for example, all marketing materials can be synchronized with a thumb drive, while all PowerPoint presentations and Access databases are synchronized with a portable hard drive. Workers in different departments, different geographic locations, at a worksite, or who are telecommuting or on a mobile device, all have access to the right files in their proper context. Furthermore, jobs linked to devices recognized by GoodSync Enterprise can be set up to start automatically once each device becomes available.

There’s just one problem: I’m not in a position to test enterprise software. There’s no way I could test mass deployment or Active Directory integration, and if I could, most of my readers wouldn’t care. This is a blog about backup for small and home office computer users.

So Richard suggested I take a look at the consumer product instead, which I eventually managed to do. I thought I’d try GoodSync 2Go, the portable version, instead of installing yet another backup program on Enna. Besides, it seemed to make sense to run a sync tool from a memory stick. It saves installing the thing on multiple machines. GoodSync 2Go normally costs $39.95, which is $10.00 more than GoodSync Pro or GoodSync for Mac, but as of this writing (February 19, 2010), it’s on sale for $19.95.

Since GoodSync 2Go takes up less than 10 MB when installed, you don’t need a large memory stick for it. But you may find it a bit confusing once you finish installing and run the program. Unlike a lot of today’s tools, GoodSync doesn’t have any wizards or pre-set configurations. Fortunately there is a manual in tolerably good English online.

GoodSync’s basic unit of operation is the job. A job is either a backup job, meaning GoodSync copies the data from left to right, or a sync job, where data gets copied in both directions (usually replacing older files with newer ones). You need to create a new job for each location you want copied. In that sense, GoodSync works just like Karen’s Replicator or SyncBack.

GoodSync copies files to and from a wider range of sources and destinations, however. Your choices for each are My Computer (any local drive), My Network (any network drive or computer you have permission to access), FTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, SecureFTP, and WinMobile. (I presume that if you get the Mac version, that last option is different.)

My first test was to sync Outlook PST files between Enna (the 17” laptop I use for most of my work) and Mena (the netbook I take with me to events and when traveling). All that happened was that I overwrote the older PST file on Mena with the newer one on Enna. No great loss there—I can retrieve the few messages I might have had stored on Mena but not on Enna (replies I made while out of the house) from the Rebit. But GoodSync is not the answer to my wish to keep my two Outlook calendars in sync (the mail is much easier). Oh, well.

For the second test, I decided to back up some files to my Amazon S3 account. (You’ll be hearing more about S3 next week, too.) It took a minute to figure out how to get logged in properly and create a new “bucket”, but once I did that, the backup job ran smoothly and quickly. (It wasn’t very large.)

Once you’ve created a job with GoodSync, you can automate it by clicking the little “Auto” button (the one that looks like a clock). The portable version lacks some of the scheduling options of the regular version, presumably because you won’t always have your USB key plugged in, but you can still schedule the job to run On GoodSync Start, On Folders Connect, On Logoff, or Periodically in increments of hours and minutes.

You can set filters to exclude or include certain files or file types, decide whether the program should “propagate” your deletions (why the default is “yes” on a  backup job, I couldn’t begin to say), keep previous copies of your files, and run scripts before or after you run GoodSync. All in all, it’s a fairly sophisticated program, even if it doesn’t synchronize individual Outlook items.

As its name implies, however, GoodSync is designed mainly as a synchronization program. It can make a perfectly adequate file-level backup program, but you’re probably not going to want to pay for it unless you want its multi-source, multi-destination sync capabilities.

If you want something that will just take all the data on your machine and back it up in one fell swoop with no brain activity involved on your part, this is not it. Go back and read about the Rebit SaveMe. But a no-brainer backup device can’t do what GoodSync does, either. They’re different jobs. Sometimes you need one thing, and sometimes another.

I happened across this in my Google Alerts the other day and figured I had to check it out. It’s true: until midnight tonight, January 19th, 2010, you can download a copy of Paragon Backup and Recovery 10 Compact (normally $39.95) and get a free serial number. That link will take you to the V3.co.uk store, which actually has a number of free software offers.

You’ll be prompted for your serial number as part of the installation process. Just click on “Get free serial” when you see this screen.

You’ll be taken to the registration page to fill in your name and e-mail address, after which Paragon will send you the product key and serial number.

The product itself seems fairly comprehensive, all things considered. I just did a very quick test yesterday; a full review will have to wait. According to the product comparison page, the compact version lacks several features offered in the full suite. It still seems like a real bargain at $0.00. Go grab a copy while you have a chance.

FTC disclosure: I have no relation to Paragon, to V3.co.uk, or to anyone else involved with this promotion. No one either paid or asked me to write this.

When I was preparing for my most recent visit to Cleveland to see my parents (that’s Cleveland, Ohio, for any of you reading this from outside the USA), my father said, “Bring a PC.”

I haven’t traveled without a computer since the days when they made you turn your computer on at security, back when you had to hunt all over the airport to find a power outlet, long before wi-fi was invented. Now that I have this nifty netbook (on which I’m typing while waiting for the plane from Chicago to Oakland to fill up), there was no chance I wouldn’t bring it along, especially since I had an appointment to talk WordPress with my brother’s law firm. (I won’t link to their website; it would embarrass them. There’s a story behind the website, and it isn’t pretty.)

But what my father meant was “Bring something that runs Windows.” Dad retired at the end of 2008, and my stepmother had convinced him to switch to a Mac, something she’d done about a year before that.

Now, I have nothing against Macs. I used to own one myself. (Okay, that was back in the days of System 7.1.) The hardware is beautiful and  the UI (user interface) is slick, though I’m not sure it’s really so much more intuitive for someone with no experience.

Regardless, they have some definite drawbacks if you’re coming out of 40 years in corporate America, and one of them is the fact that Microsoft Office for the Mac does not work the same way as Office for Windows. (I know, they’re coming out with a new version of it. And I also know, and explained to Dad, that you can run Windows quite nicely in a Virtual Machine on a Mac—something you’d have a much harder time doing in reverse.)

The big problem, in this case, was Outlook’s famous proprietary PST file. Dad had three of them, given to him by the IT staff at BP when he turned in his company laptop (an undistinguished Dell). Outlook somehow (Microsoft experts, feel free to help me out) manages to store your contacts, calendar, e-mail messages, attachments, tasks, and everything else in a single PST file. But without a working copy of Outlook, getting anything out of that PST file is…just a bit difficult.

Not only won’t Entourage for Mac won’t open PST files, Microsoft appears to have entirely failed to make any kind of conversion tool. The “Genius Bar” at the  local Apple store couldn’t help either; they insist they know nothing at all about Windows programs. So it was up to Yours Truly, the family geek, to find a way to restore Dad’s e-mail from his backup CDs.

Dad had already had his contacts exported to an Excel spreadsheet (though he didn’t know how to import them into Entourage, and it turns out that the contact fields in Entourage and those in Outlook don’t match, so you have to map them onto each other by hand), and the calendar didn’t matter, but he wanted the e-mail attachments. Someone had turned him onto a program called O2M (for Office to Mac) by a company called Little Machines. (Based in San Francisco, as it happens.)

The program is only $10, primarily because it relies on a working copy of Outlook (and, of course, a Windows computer to run it on) for most of its function. I imagine that its creators envision their customers using it before they get rid of their PCs, rather than afterwards. I downloaded the Outlook XP/2003 version onto Mena (since I’m still using Office 2003 on her, so as not to tax her more limited resources), tested it, and then paid for the license. Then I copied Dad’s PST files onto a USB stick (no, not the one that got smashed), opened them in Outlook, and started up O2M.

As you can see from the screenshots, the interface is very straightforward.

Once you’ve checked the mailboxes you want (in this case, I excluded all my own mail, contacts, and calendar items), O2M asks whether you want to include all your attachments or just those under a certain size or in a certain date range, and then proceeds on to calendar and contact items. Dad’s PST files only contained mail items, so they were easy to export, but it took a while for the program to process the messages. (It seems to run pretty fast, but it has to handle them one by one.)

The output of O2M’s e-mail conversion is mbox files. I remember those from the days when I used Eudora. The curious thing about Entourage, however, is that even though it will, allegedly, import mbox files, the import process didn’t work; the files on my memory stick remained grayed out. So I decided to RTFM (Read the Freaking Manual, which you get to by clicking that little “Help” button in the top left of the O2M window), and discovered that there are special directions for importing the O2M files to Entourage.

Here’s how to import mbox mail files into Microsoft’s Entourage program:

1. Start up Entourage. If this is your first time using it, you might want to create one or more folders where your imported emails can be dragged and stored.
2. Drag the mbox file you want to import into Entourage’s folder list and drop it. Entourage will turn the mbox file into a new mail folder. Open the new folder, and you’ll find all of your imported emails inside it. If you like, you can move one or more emails from the new folder to other folders to organize them.

Dad had a folder for “Imported Mail” in Entourage already, so I dragged all the mail into that, renamed the mail folders to something less clumsy, re-created the subfolder structures—and we were in business. All the attachments had come through.

So if you’re leaving the corporate rat-race and want to switch from Windows to Mac, I can recommend O2M. And I definitely recommend getting it before you dispose of the Windows machine. Otherwise you might spend almost a year waiting around for your geeky offspring to help you turn your backup CDs from useless pieces of plastic back into your e-mail.

When I first heard about Memeo Instant Backup, I objected that no program that backed up your entire hard drive could possibly be “instant.” Hard drives are getting bigger and bigger, so copying them takes longer and longer.

Robert Phillips explained to me that the “instant” part refers to the fact that the backup process starts instantly: as soon as you install the product, it begins backing you up. You don’t have to tell Instant Backup anything except where you want it to put your files. It’s designed to be easy enough for your grandparents to use, and the author of the press release tried it on hers to make sure.

I was expecting something designed to compete with Rebit, but that’s not quite what I got. Memeo Instant Backup is simple, yes. It’s got a colorful, friendly user interface, and it gets right down to work. It even works pretty quickly, and after the initial backup, its continuous monitoring doesn’t put too much drain on the system. But it’s got a little truth in advertising problem that you need to know about.

The reason I was expecting a software version of Rebit was this statement: “Protect your entire computer instantly. All files on your C drive will be included in the backup plan.” As I found out after running Memeo Instant Backup, this is simply not true. Let’s walk through it and see if you can spot what’s missing.

One minor but early irritation was the inability to choose which directory to install the program to, but that’s because I’m a “power user” type. The people this product is aimed at don’t care about things like that, if they even know they’re an option. There are very few options available in Memeo Instant Backup, but that’s a deliberate move to avoid confusing the user. In essence, there are two things you can do: back up everything, or restore everything. Oh, and you can pause a backup while it’s running if you need to, say, move or rename a file you just downloaded.

The interface is attractive and easy to understand. An illustration of a computer monitor shows the relative proportions of the different kinds of data you have on your machine, while a progress bar shows how much of the available space on your backup device is occupied.

(In case you’re wondering, I chose the new Metro drive from Buffalo as the backup destination.)

Those colorful icons and the size of the completed backup should be your first hint that Memeo Instant Backup is not really backing up the entire C drive. Enna is a fairly old laptop, so my C drive is only 80 GB, though I have a second 80 GB drive built in, as well. Right now my C drive is about half full: I’ve used 40.2 GB. The size of that backup is 15.4 GB.

What’s missing? The obvious answer is “program files.” Memeo refers specifically to documents, pictures, music, videos, and “others.” If you look at the actual backup destination folder, that’s even more explicit. Instant Backup avoids operating system folders and default program installation folders, so the “Program Files” and “Windows” directories are conspicuous by their absence, are many of the subfolders from “Documents and Settings.”

Leaving out the system files is fair enough, though I don’t think you can make a truthful claim to back up an entire drive if you skip them. But there’s something else missing here, and it’s a pretty big oversight.

Not one of those folders contains my Outlook PST folder. For the uninitiated, Outlook stores all its data in a folder called Outlook.pst that’s stored in Documents and Settings\User Name\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. You will notice there is no such folder here. That means that my e-mail, calendar, and contacts are not backed up. (Well, not by Memeo. I am, of course, backing them up.) Maybe the assumption is that everybody’s grandparents use Yahoo! or Gmail or Hotmail.

At least the fact that these files and folders neatly replicate the structure on your C drive means that it’s possible to restore a single file via drag and drop, because you can’t do it through the Memeo Instant Backup restore interface. The only option there is to restore all your files, though you do get the choice of whether to restore them to their original location or an alternative location. Whether you will ever then be able to delete them from that alternative location seems to be an open question.

Memeo Premium Backup lets you restore individual files and has other features that the less expensive Instant Backup lacks. I’ve written about its predecessors before if you’re interested.

Instant Backup seems to do a pretty good job at the things it does. I do think the lack of e-mail backup is a serious drawback for anyone who uses a POP mail client, and that the claim to back up “your entire drive” should be adjusted to something more factual. Nevertheless, I like the program as a tool for technophobes who need to back up their photos, documents, and music. It’s friendly, easy to use, and unobtrusive. It will also probably improve in subsequent versions, the way Memeo’s other products have.