Dobry Backuper Review

If you’re looking for an effective way to back up data for a small or home office, Dobry Backuper might just be the thing you’re looking for.

I remember reading that people generally don’t back things up until they lose something crucial. Only then do they start to take backing up seriously. A little too late.

Think about it - if your main machine(s) died this minute, could you get back what you needed??

If the thought makes you shudder as a home user, imagine the feeling that system admins get when data loss occurs.

The developers of backup software know how important a reliable backup is and so their software, while comprehensive, is usually quite expensive and complicated to use.

Dobry Backuper “is intended for home users and small offices with several (3-5) computers connected in a network, but mostly home users,” according to Valeriy Ryazanov of Dobrysoft.

The program allows multiple backup scripts to be made. The backups can be complete or incremental if storage space or time is an issue.

A simple schedule option means that the application can back daily, weekly or monthly backups. As with some of the more expensive backup programs, the application does not need to be running for the schedule to work. There is a background process that will take care of the backup while unattended.

The interface is well thought out and intuitive. Adding files from different locations is as simple as dragging them into the “well” of the application window.

Restoring files is straight forward and can be done to the same location as the original files (danger!!!) or to a location of your choice.

A notification log is also available but there was no option to have this sent to a user. This means that you have to manually check the logs to make sure things worked. Not a major problem, but it would be a nice feature.

So what’s missing?

As the site says, “Dobry Backuper can back up any files and folders, to which the current user has read access.” This means if you want to back up another user’s home folder, you’re out of luck - you don’t have access to it.

Likewise, you can’t backup files on another Mac on a network unless that Mac is a mounted volume on the backup machine. This is a very specialised task and more likely to be required in a corporate environment - it’s not likely to be an issue for home or small network users.

Then there’s the notification issue - that’s something that an Applescript could probably take care of, but it would be a nice feature to have within the application.

It would also be nice to be able to simply duplicate an already existing script. It is possible to make complicated backup scripts by selecting files from different parts of your hard drive and mounted volumes and it’s a shame that there is no “duplicate backup script” option; if you wish to make a similar script to one that already exists, you have to do it all again.

Those couple of little extras would put some polish on this application to the point where I could see some of my clients replacing their aging (and rapidly running out of compatible versions of OS X) versions of Retrospect. At $29.95, it’s hard to argue with the bang for the buck!

For your basic backup needs, give Dobry Backuper a try.