Genie Backup Manager Home is easy to use backup software from Genie9 Corporation (formerly known as Genie-Soft). This is a review of the much improved version 9.0.
Pros
- User friendly design to backup your most important files, or your entire system
- Ability to backup and restore individual program and system settings
Cons
- No full disk imaging
The Bottom Line
Powerful and easy to use. Genie Backup Manager Home is great for users who know what they want to backup. The use of plugins makes restoring individual programs quick and easy.
Installation and Setup
I didn’t have any problems with the installation. Genie Backup Manager is very easy to setup and the installation wizard guides you through the whole process. You’re then given the option to start a 30 day free trial.
Backing Up
At first glance, the interface has been completely redesigned from version 8. It’s now sleeker and easier to understand. Three large buttons perform the most basic functions you would expect: backup, restore, and disaster recovery.
An optional “Easy” mode removes all options and leaves only two, very large buttons: Backup and Restore. It doesn’t get much easier than that!
Simple mode is…simple
Selecting the backup button, you’re taken through a series of menus where you define where and what to backup. The My Profile tab lets you select everything you’d like to backup.
Choose to backup the most important files on your computer
There’s also a tab for selecting individual files and folders.
The final tab lets you select custom plugins to extend the functionality of Genie Backup Manager Home.
For example, if you wanted to backup the files and settings for a single program (Norton Anti-virus, for instance) you could do that with a plugin. Plugins are downloaded from the Genie9 website, although many are pre-installed. You can also create your own plugins if you have the technical know-how.
What are plugins?
Plugins are great because it means you can restore any program to a specific point in time. Let’s say you completely mess up a program. What do you do? With traditional backup software, you’d have to either: 1.) Restore your entire computer from a previous backup (in the case of full disk imaging software), or 2.) Manually restore your program from individual files, folders, and possibly even registry entries. Nobody wants to go through that! With plugins in Genie Backup Manager, it’s easy.
Plugins make it easy to backup additional programs
You can check out the full list of official and user-submitted plugins at the Genie9 website here.
Support for full, incremental, and mirrored backups is included. And really, this is all most home users need.
Although you can’t run your own pre/post commands, you can choose to shut down the computer after a backup completes.
Finally, you can schedule your backups to run automatically.
Restoring
Restoring from a backup is easy. Simply select the Restore button from the main menu and follow the instructions. Genie Backup Manager will restore whatever you select, and then ask you to reboot your computer to complete the process.
In case of a system failure, you can use GBM’s disaster recovery tool to create bootable media. You would then boot into the CD/DVD (there’s no USB flash drive support, unfortunately) and restore your backup from outside Windows.
The recovery environment is fairly easy to understand. That’s good, because the last thing you want to do when your system fails is dig through a bunch of manuals.
Other Features
Compression
Genie Backup Manager can compress your files into .zip format. You can even specify the compression level, which affects the speed and size of your backups.
Encryption
Optionally protect your backups with a AES encrypted password.
SwiftRestore self-restorable backups
This will add a self-extractable .exe file to your storage media. That way, you can browse and restore your backups without even having Genie Backup Manager Home installed.
Open File Backup
Automatically backs up open files using Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)
The Catalog
This is a library of all the files in your backup jobs. You can drill down exactly what you want to extract, and save it to your computer. This is a lot easier than using the Restore feature if you just want to recover a couple files or folders.
Support
Genie9 provides full, lifetime support for their software. Whereas many other companies are moving to a pay-per-incident support system, Genie9 recognizes how important support is to their customers. Help is available through a helpdesk. I submitted several support tickets and received replies in 1-2 business days. Overall it was a very good experience.
| Specifications | |
| Product Name | Genie Backup Manager Home |
| Version | 9.0 |
| License | Shareware |
| Price | $49.95 |
| Operating Systems | Window |
| Backup Types | |
| Files and Folders | |
| Full Disk Image | |
| Incremental | |
| Differential | |
| Backup Destinations | |
| Hard Drive | |
| Removable Media | |
| Network Shares | |
| Blu-ray | |
| CD/DVD | |
| FTP | |
| SFTP | |
| Online Storage | |
| Features | |
| Compression | |
| Encryption | |
| Email Notifications | |
| Error Handling | |
| File Versioning | |
| Priority Setting | |
| Scheduling | |
| Speed Limiting | |
| Synchronization | |
Geoff Akerlund
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