Insofta Document Backup

Insofta Document Backup is basic in name as well as concept--the concept being to make the backup process as simple as possible, something it does quite well. The program is professional in appearance, which will make neophytes and experienced users alike feel good about it. It steps you through the process of creating backup jobs, and will even stick an icon for the job you just created on the desktop.

Document Backup uses the Windows Volume Shadow Service to back up locked files, and can store its zip files to Blu-ray and DVD as well as local, network, and FTP destinations. It doesn't keep revisions of individual files, but can store each new backup in a dated folder if you so desire. The program performs full backups to an existing archive, as well as incremental and differential backups to an existing archive.

Encryption and scheduling are also available. In fact, Insofta Document Backup is the only program that I know offers the option to skip compressing already-compressed file types like jpegs to save time during the backup. To be fair, some other programs may be doing this automatically.

One thing I'd like to see added to Document Backup are preconfigured filters and filter sets such as *.doc or Word Processing Documents (*.doc, *.docx, *.wpd, *.txt, etc.). Currently you must add these manually which doesn't fit with the program's easy-to-use philosophy. The other thing I miss is plain file backup--even if you select no compression, files are still zipped up.

I was impressed with Insofta Document Backup, though the lack of plain file backup may render it less than a perfect fit for some.

--Jon L. Jacobi