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Review: Genie Backup Manager Pro (GBM) 7

Company: Genie-Soft
Download: Genie-Soft
Cost: $69.95 (Professional)
$49.95 (Home)

Genie Backup Manager was reviewed in the process of searching for the best backup software.

Genie Backup Manager Pro 7

Pros

  • Excellent customization options
  • Program seems to offer the most flexibility of the packages I have evaluated.
  • GUI is very well designed.
  • Offers XML-based scripting language for job control
  • Removal of old backup jobs (after a certain number or time period has elapsed)
  • Community support forum and Helpdesk (ticket-based) technical support
  • Email notification has SSL support so it can use HTTP email servers
  • Provides a "self-restorable backup set (swift restore)". This is a self-executing restore program that is archived with the data.
  • Includes a Genie-Wipe tool which is useful for cleaning up after decrypting and viewing files.
  • Scriptable plugins allow the configuration of many programs to be saved automatically. Users have contributed a large number of scripts for the most popular software.
  • Frequent releases/builds mean that development team is active, but may also imply a less stable product.

Cons

  • Attempts to archive to DVD-R were unsuccessful and a frustrating waste of time due to several bugs in the software. These failures weren't burn problems, but software bugs that caused the application to come up with spurious messages and fail after 20 hours of encrypting & DVD burning.
  • "Lightning fast encryption" (their words) was slow. GBM would spend roughly 1.5 hours per disc to perform the encryption -- on a dual-core 3800x2 processor with 3 GB RAM! This is performance level is quite poor. Genie Backup Manager tech support indicated that they have recreated the problem, but no updates to the support ticket indicate a fix.
  • Open file copying support is an extra cost feature via the File Access Manager (FAM). Occasional specials have bundled this feature for free.
  • No data verification when using FTP. Other utilities typically download the files after upload to ensure integrity.
  • Failures / bugs noted by users in the support forum. Others have also mentioned failures in working with large backups jobs, which may be an area that needs to be addressed further. While forum comments must be read with skepticism, I have encountered similar troubles in my trial period.
  • Using encryption means using a proprietary format (not just ZIP). This may be the reason that Swift Restore is provided. While it may be possible to rename the backup files from .gbp to .zip and decompress with WinZip, the encryption process is non-standard (.genc extension).
  • Names of files in the backup set are stored in plain-text even if the job is encrypted. This may be a concern if the backup job file is uploaded to insecure remote FTP server.

Summary

Genie Backup Manager offers a very nice interface, many options and appears to be well supported. While I was hopeful that I would find it to be suitable for my needs, I have a hard time feeling comfortable recommending it due to the fairly significant bugs that I and others have encountered.

 

Reader's Comments:

Please leave your comments or suggestions below!
2008-03-31JP
 GenieSoft has allowed some truly bizarre glitches to exist for a long time. Up through GBM v5.0, if you created a folder, ran a backup for the first time, and then created a single sub-folder only one level down, GBM v5.0 would ignore that sub-folder. So, for example, if you had a folder called "Pictures" before your very first GBM backup, then created a bunch of sub-folders broken down by, say, date, NONE of those sub-folders would have been backed up. How did such a monumental flaw persist through five GBM generations?
2007-12-27Alex
 I too can say without reservation that GBM Pro 8 is not ready for prime time! The latest build crashes for no apparent reason and when it attempts to send a zip file of it's error reports to their tech support email address it cannot find their server and aborts. While their menu shows a "web update" feature it has not been implemented according to their tech support people. Very flaky and unstable...two thumbs down on this package! Keep shopping.
2007-09-20Richard
 Excellent review, I also can confirm the problems with genie backup manager pro version 6.0. I have used it now for a few years and i have had lots of struggles with it which cost me lots of time. I have had a lot of corresponding with the people from genie I also spoke with the CEO they are very polite but don't solve the problems. It is simply not stable. I cant remember all the problems but it were a lot.

I speak about large backup's > GB.

So now i use it only with very simple settings.

Today i had an error report again: not enough space on the network harddisk which it should write the backup on. The real problem was that the network connection was gone.

In the report it was't even clear which job give the problem and which device was not accessible.

I have also seen that in a mirror backup old files (>1/2 year old) are backed up again while nothing is changed.

Another issue with incremental backup was that the free space on the disk should be as much as the total backup. instead of the incremental backup size. I think that is solved now

And so on and so on
they just offered me for 25$ to upgrade to 8.0 but if I read the review about 7.0 it's clear for me that they still haven't things under control.

When i bought the software it was on advise of a review, later i discovered that it was not a very independent review it seems that the review was initiated by genie........ there marketing is good the looks of the software is good but what is should do sucks, seems they have copied Microsofts philosophy....
 Thanks for sharing your experiences.

 

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