Deja Vu

I used to work but since upgrading to 5.2.2 it will no longer do a backup to an Apple Airport Disk ( I have tried more than one) it gives an HFS+ compression error. I have contacted Propaganda Productions support several times about the error and have never received even the courtesy of a reply - beware if you upgrade and have any issues support for it doesn't exist. This will be my last upgrade with this company.

For my needs, the best and simplest backup solution for macOS. I use Time Machine as well, but Deja Vu has served me well for much longer, and it does things that Time Machine cannot, like making a weekly bootable clone of my hard drive. I am happy to see the new version.

We would like to sincerely thank everyone who has used and supported Deja Vu over the many years of its existence. Naturally, we have had our ups and downs along the way. We have made mistakes. On the other hand, we have successfully kept Deja Vu running on every system since Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar). We believe that a sensible person will recognize that this requires a certain level of commitment and reliability. Where we have fallen short, we will continually strive to be better. Deja Vu 5 represents the better part of a year's worth of development. We have changed a lot of code that had remained unchanged for a decade or more. We tried to reimagine how Deja Vu could be, and we tore down and rebuilt things which had been bothering us for a long time. Whether you have been with us since the beginning, or whether you are just discovering Deja Vu for the first time, we invite you to download Deja Vu 5 and give it a try. See what you think. And if, after consulting the resources on our Support page (https://propagandaprod.com/support.html), you still have any problems or questions, please do contact us, and we will do our best to try to help you. Thank you!

Wish I could trust the developer on continued support and not gouging existing users with 'upgrades' to fix known issues. As a longtime user, I gave up when the developer lost interest. It would take much better license restrictions and pricing to bring me back. That's a shame because it was an good program – just poorly managed.

I like Deja Vu in its current version. It's effortless and effective. But one thing to remember: cull and curate your files saved by Deja Vu! I didn't and found 250 MB of duplicate videos, originally downloaded from YouTube onto my Desktop, stashed in a nondescript Movies folder in Documents. Needless to say, it was slowing my MBP down, badly. I culled the files, deletiing most, and disabled Deja Vu for that purpose. Now everything is hunky-dory. Don't know about the pricing. I don't remember paying $30.

First, I used this backup software for years and then it stopped working. This used to be a very reliable backup application but over the years the developer has shown little interest in continuing the development of Deja Vu. I for one moved on, it seems clear to me that the developer lost interest and this is just an update to bring some attention and to grab some quick sales off the tails of a new major System update. I also believe we won't see another update for a very long time. There are **too many** great backup utilities available to be wasting your time with an app that gets very little attention from the developer. I wish the developer put his heart back into Deja Vu, it was a great back utility in its day. I do not know the developer, these are just my assumptions from years of using and watching the growth of this application. MacUpdate currently shows the version downloads is sitting at 2. Don't think that will pay the bills.

This developer's website lists a single license at a price twice as high as the $14.95 shown on MacUpdate above. I wrote to the company, and they informed me in their usual terse manner that (1) $29.95 is the actual price and (2) there is no such thing as an upgrade price. You want the latest version? - buy it over again.

I've used Deja Vu for years and have found it to be extremely reliable. I highly recommend it BUT my copy recently stopped working with a Lion update. It's been some weeks and still no sign of anything from the developer.

I used Deja Vu for years and was happy years ago because of the simple design, so I bought multiple copies. Then I experienced bugs preventing data from backing up. The developer wouldn't solve the bugs, dismissed my reports, and like others have experienced stopped responding to email. The bugs and lack of support made me wisely switch to ChronoSync for backing up multiple Macs on a local network. It's nice that the author is updating Deja Vu now, and it may work now, but the previous multi-year update hiatus and unfriendly approach to his customers should be considered if you're considering this.

backuplist+ works much better without the flakey developer behavior. Even though it's free, it works so well and flawlessly, that I gave the developer money because it's so well written. I stopped using DejaVu a while ago and haven't looked back.

I've been a long time user of DejaVu but can't recommend the Lion version. I've been unable to get the Lion version to work over the network. Unresponsive support requests. Avoid!!

I've been using DejaVu since I first got it with Toast, back before 2004. I've found it consistently reliable, with an easy-to-manage interface, and flexibility. Where many competitors have difficulty creating consistently bootable cloned backups, DejaVu has never failed. When I've needed technical support, I've received prompt and clear response from the developer. I've just (finally) upgraded to Lion, and I'm finding the Lion version to be just as I'd expect and hope. An excellent product.

Stronly recommend NOT to buy this product because continuation of development is far from sure. I bought deja vu 10 months ago at $29. Then it stopped working after I tested a beta at the developer's request. Now I have to pay again (registration stopped working) to get the same product working. No option to downgrade. Jeff Holland, the developer responded: "We work hard to make Déjà Vu an excellent backup utility and we think we deserve to be paid for it. If the day comes when enough people like you disagree, we will stop working on it. Are you paid only once per year for the work that you do?" So you buy a product, test beta software and give feedback, and than you are being asked to pay again like it is a subscription service. When asked how to download, Jeff Holland simply stops replying. Thanks and come again! When buying the product, keep in mind you might have to pay again in a year or so and that Jeff might stop developing the product.

For this type of backup utility SynkPro 7 puts Deja-Vu 4.1 to shame. Deja-Vu crashes consistently and synkPro rarely crashes and performs as promised. I am registered user of both utilities and many other backup utilities. I use Arq & SynkPro and Carbon Copy Cloner as my primary backup utilities. Yes, I am anal about backing up.

Version 4.x is Lion-only. No support for previous Mac operating systems.

No longer works with Lion.

Works like a charm. It was the only Backup that worked correcly from iMac to 2 different NAS systems.

I was running version 3.4.2 on OS X 10.5.8 on my G4 tower, just for reference. The app works relatively well, until you get to a file larger than 4GB, and then the "Safety Net" feature ALWAYS makes copies of the file, regardless of it's modified status. It steals hard drive space down faster than you could ever imagine if you're working with large files, which is mostly what I work with. I emailed the developer back in January asking for assistance before buying the software, as it is useless to me if it is going to needlessly duplicate large files. I never heard back from the developer and I never paid for the software. Still looking for a similar, functional solution if anyone has ideas.

Have been recommending and selling this software for some time now and the main strength of this software is it uses the unix command psync that has been backing up machines for over 20 years. But a major flaw in the Auto Mounting network drives to do with Leopard and Snow Leopards keychain permissions has rendered this side of the software useless with no reply from the Developer I will be looking elsewhere. If your backing up to an external drive attached to the machine then this software uses less time, processing power and space than Time Machine

I have been using this backup utility for over 5 years and love its simplicity and efficiency. It allows scheduling, items to exclude, and many other essential features. My backup application of choice.