TVCNET  Tri-Backup 4.04 was exceptional last year...

The new 5.0 beta version is nicely featured as well and seems to respond very well in Leopard.

Downside is that 4.04 is flaky if it works at all under Mac OS X Leopard, requiring you to dump 4.04 and install the 5.0 beta.

Once the beta expires you'll be forced to pay the new software fee:

Upgrade price is US$49 from Tri-BACKUP 4 to Tri-BACKUP 5 (normal

version), and US$69 to Tri-BACKUP Pro 5.

My gripe:

First, the value of the dollar has dropped, so this $49 is not last years $49. So they've affectively raised their rates while other just as decent software developed by hard working US developers costs half as much.

So, you get to decide:

1. Pay a company who is charging for upgrades and who's upgrade history between versions spans a year a more.

Version 5 beta: Feb 2008

Version 4.0.4: Jan 2006

Version 4.0.3: May 2005

Version 4.0.2: Aug 2004

2. Pay a company who has effectively raised their rates at a time when their version 4.04 version has become nonresponsive under Panther (something akin to holding some folks by the you know what, because the old version no longer works reliably).

3. Go with a USA company who's offering lower cost software with a good upgrades track record, who doesn't have a record of increasing their rate when an older version stops working... so you are trapped into paying for the next version.

I hate being forced to pay software companies because they stop supporting their apps.

I recommend supporting companies who maintain ongoing a history of periodic upgrades, instead of one that took almost a year to upgrade to 5.0, and then appear to be forcing existing paid customers to pay when their older version stopped working.

Enjoy!  (Version 5.0b80204)

DONPERREAULT  These guys are two days late for the party.   (Version 5.0b80204)

WILMA  Summary: Great backup, lousy restore

I just tested this software. It does a great job backing up, with lots of options. Backups can be native file format in a Finder folder hierarchy, so you can search them with any search utility. Iterative backups get made within the same folder hierarchy, in dated folders. It's fast. It's smart.

Unfortunately, Tri-BACKUP's restore functionality is, AFAICT, extremely limited. You can't simply tell it to restore a folder to how it was at last backup ... or at a given date in the past ... or how it was when some previous backup got made. Nope, you've got to manually page through a file list to decide which version of what gets restored. Since I have over 250,000 files in my Documents folder alone, plus a huge photo archive, restoring using Tri-BACKUP just isn't practical.

Too bad, because otherwise it's a nice program, and I've heard very good reports about its reliability.  (Version 4.0.4)

FFASS  Great backup software! I've been using this app for years for normal daily backups with no problems.

Due to some recent computer problems I've realized that I needed to use Tri-Backup to take my data backups to another level. So, I recently cloned my start up disk to another drive using Tri-Backup and it made a perfect bootable duplicate! I now have the program set up to quickly update the cloned copy at the click of a button.

The impetus for cloning my start up drive was what seemed to be a drive failure, but the use of Disk Warrior and an OS reinstall fixed what actually turned out to be a "missing node" problem. I had "evolutive" backups on hand of my data but it still took a day and half to manually drag or reinstall everything back to where it previously was.

Having a bootable clone is of great benefit in light of my experience: now if some digital disaster rears it's ugly head, I can now simply reboot to start up drive #2 and jump right back into whatever it was that I was doing on my computer, and deal with the problematic drive at a more convenient time later on.

Note that cloning a drive is NEVER a sensible replacement for regular backups of your valuable data! I suggest using Tri-Backup's "evolutive" backup scheme to retain at least 5 previous versions of your important files.  (Version 4.0.4)