One of the things that I cannot stress enough is backing up your files.

We store our work documents, pictures, music, videos, precious family photos and more on our computers, and with one hard drive glitch all our important files can be gone forever. Luckily, there are plenty of easy ways to prevent data loss by backing up your system.

Essentially, backing up produces copies of all your hard drive contents and exports them to one file, typically stored on a remote drive. In the old days this was done with tape drives and CD-R discs, but now this can often be done with external hard drives or flash memory.

Finding the right backup program can be quite tricky, but I recently came across Roxio BackOnTrack 3, and it seems to make backing up my PC easier than ever.

My experience with BackOnTrack has been excellent. The installation process went exceptionally well. Once the program was fully installed, I was taken to a preference window to customize my backup options.

Once that was out of the way, I was brought to a beautiful, simple, well-designed interface where all the options were just a click away. The software makes a statement with its easy to use interface of big buttons and easy to follow prompts.

I started out backing up a 100MB video file, and soon it was in a folder on my drive ready to be restored. I then deleted the file off my internal disk and restored it with BackOnTrack, and again within a few minutes a notification window came up telling me that my restore was completed successfully.

Finally I decided to backup my whole system and see how the product performed. All you have to do is click the “backup drive” button in the frequent tasks pane, select the drive you wish to backup, select the destination drive and click the large orange “go” button. Restoring files is just as easy.

In my tests, Roxio BackOnTrack exceeded expectations, mainly because of its ease of use, large buttons, great interface and overall great functionality. I would definitely recommend the software to anyone who wants an easy backup solution and piece of mind knowing that their files are safe.

It does have a few downsides, like when you try to back up individual files. The program only gives you the option to select email messages, financial data, photos, productivity documents videos and music. I would prefer if you could use the windows explorer and select the files to be backed up, rather then using its choice interface.

With its great features, functionality, ease of use, $49.99 price tag and it’s great user interface, Roxio BackOnTrack is a must have for any PC user.

Quck Hits:

Publisher: Roxio
Developer: Roxio
Platform: Windows XP or Vista
Genre: Backup Utility

Overall: [rating:4.5]

About The Author

Mike Preble is a Blast Magazine staff writer.

Leave a Reply