Backup Sets page Overview of the main window of BackupMe.

Overview

     Backup Sets page is a main page of BackupMe program. It allows to add, edit or delete Backup Sets, run backups and restores, view logs. Usually the page looks like the image below:

     The main part of this page is a list of all existing Backup Sets. To do anything with a Backup Set, you have to select it in this list. To add a new Backup Set to this list, use the New button. To delete a Backup Set, use the Delete button.

     To save all changes you have made with Backup Sets, use the Save button. It saves all Backup Sets again (no matter did you edit them or not) and creates scheduled tasks to start periodical backups. BackupMe fully integrated with the Windows scheduler and if you have any problems with scheduled tasks, simply re-save your Backup Sets.

     To run a backup, restore or view logs of a Backup Set, use Backup, Restore and Logs buttons correspondingly. Repair button is used to open a Repair Wizard and Calendar button opens a calendar of backups. Use it to find out when scheduled backups will be run.

Information panel

     Information panel is a part of the Backup Sets page under the list of Backup Sets. It can show tabbed pages with Backup Set properties (as on the image above) or a status window of a process that is run at this moment (see image below).

"Source" information page

     Source page of the information window allows you to include and exclude files, folders and registry keys to/from backup. When you add a new Backup Set, all boxes are white. You can include folders, registry keys, or files to backup by clicking on checkmarks near a folder or a file. The selected folders, files and registry keys have a white box with a red check.

     To exclude folders or remove them from being included the list, you simply have to click on the associated checkbox again. A gray box with a black check means that this folder will not be included in the backup, but it contains included files or folders. By using the folders with this state, you can easily find included folders in the tree. A gray box with a red check means that this folder will be included in the backup, but it contains a number of excluded subfolders.

     To preview a list of the selected files, press the button "Show list of files to backup".

"Destination" information page

     Destination page of the information window allows you to configure a backup storage. Each Backup Set has its own page that depend on a type of backup storage you selected for the selected Backup Set. For example if you backup on a removable disk, you'll see the page like on the image:

You can select one of follow backup storages:

1. Zip archive - As a result you'll have a standard ZIP archive on your hard disk. It's not a good decision, because reliability of such backup is not very good: if your hard disk is crashed you will lose everything. You can use this option if you store Backup archive on other hard disk than source files.
   
   

2. Removable or Hard disk - Use this option if you want to store backup archives on CD-R/CD-RW/DVD/ZIP or other removable disks. When you are backing on CD-R, BackupMe requires a drive-letter access to the drive, which has to be provided by another program such as Adaptec's DirectCD, CeQuadrat PacketCD or InstantWrite. One way to tell if you can backup to your CD-R drive, is the device appears in your Windows Explorer as a drive letter (i.e. the drive has been mapped) and you can use it for basic file copying and storage.

   When BackupMe backs up on Removable disk, instead of making one backup archive per one disk, it makes a few backup archives, each of them has size about 10MB. It does so, because each of archives self-independent and can be restored if some of other archives are corrupted due media fault. It makes backup more reliable and reduces time of restore session. When current removable disk is filled, BackupMe asks for a new disk.
   
   

3. FTP Server - Use this option if you want to store backup archives on your FTP account of any standard FTP Server. BackupMe sends and downloads backup archives to FTP Server without using any external software!

   You can specify a secondary backup server that will be used in case the primary is down. To do that you have to specify all server's names separated by semicolon (e.g. primary.server.com;secondary.server.com). The secondary server will be used only if Software can't login to the primary server. BackupMe does not restore files from the secondary server. That's why you have to resend all backup archives to the primary backup server when it's up again.

   Standard FTP protocol does not encrypt FTP connections and that's why all information (username, password, file transfers) isn't encrypted. That gives a chance to hackers to steal your username and password and get access to your FTP account. To secure FTP connections it's possibly to use standard SSL protocol (that is uses to secure internet transactions). That will make BackupMe to be able to work with any FTP Server that supports secure FTP connections. But not all FTP Servers supports SSL protocol. There are a few, which do:

   1. KieSoft Advanced FTP Server.
   2. FTP Serv-U

   Also our Advanced FTP Server has been designed to easily make your existing FTP server a secure FTP server. It allows for a Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL/TLS, connection to be made to your FTP server which protects both the command channel (username/password) and the data channel (your information).

4. Tape - BackupMe can backup on any Tape Unit that is recognized by Windows NT/2000/XP. If you want and your Tape Unit uses hardware compression, software compression will be automatically disabled.

   Corporate version of BackupMe makes you be able to backup on a remote Tape Unit through network. To share a Tape Unit you have to start "Tape Device Console" and share a tape unit.

"Scheduler" information page

     Scheduler page allows you to configure when to run periodical backups. Set a time to start backups, check the week days and select backup type.

"Others" information page

     Others page allows you to enable password protection of backup archives, set compression level and backup priority.

"External programs" information page

     BackupMe gives you unlimited customization of the backup process through the use of external commands. An external command is an external executable file that can process different operations with source and archive files before, during, and after backup.

     Here you can add a number of external commands to execute in the different events of backup process. Each external command can have a command line. You can use a number of special variables in the command line. BackupMe replaces variables on real names before executing the external command.

     When you have made all changes, you have to save them by pressing the Save button.