A Bad Time with Apple Backup 3

This is not a review, just a tech note.

I tried for years to get Apple’s Backup 1.0 and 2.0
to work for me. It always failed to backup my home
directory, stopping with an error. My home directory
is big, about 62 GB, but there’s nothing unusual about it.

Finally, version 3.0 worked fine. (It’s now at version
3.1.) It’s been backing up my home directory with
first a full and then incremental backups for most of
2006.

The other day, I had to recover a 190 MB folder that I had
accidentally deleted. This was my first restore.
That’s when the trouble started.

1. Too many incremental backups were in place. I should
have been doing a full backup once a week and letting no
more than six incrementals build up. But Backup 3 doesn’t
allow this so far as I can tell. It will only do one
full, and it’ll accumulate as many incrementals as you
let it.

2. The restore was s-l-o-w. It took 40 minutes for 190 MB.
Likely due to too many incrementals.

3. The progress bar is very asynchronous. It gives absolutely
no realistic indication of the overall progress.

4. The icon is wrong during a restore. That is, the sense of
the icon should reverse, showing contents flowing from the backup
volume to the home directory. But it doesn’t.

5. The text label is misleading. Instead of identifying the
specific folder I selected and displaying a confirmation that
it is restoring that folder, it says, “Restoring Home Folder”
which alarmed the hell out of me.

6. There is no incremental listing of the files being restored in
order to provide warm fuzzies. It just goes off, does its thing,
and while you sit on the edge of your seat, biting your nails,
hoping that all will go well, it provides absolutely no warm
fuzzies of user feedback.

7. Just before it finished restoring a meager 190 MB, it crashed.
Ouch! I was able to restart the restore, and it ran to completion.

8. During the restore, a backup was scheduled that day at 6:00 pm.
Instead of noting that a restore was in progress, it tried to
initiate the backup — Yikes! — which also scared the hell out of
me. Good thing I was there in person to abort the backup.

9. After I aborted the backup, the restore progress bar changed
from a solid bar to a barber pole type bar. For reasons beyond
understanding.

10. My reaction has been poor to all this. Frak. The net-net,
is that I finally recovered 190 MB. But I’m hunting for
a better solution.

11. Anyone have suggestions for a better, more reliable, more
customizable, more professional application for Mac OS X backup?
For a reasonable price. Don’t talk to me about Dantz/EMC
Retrospect unless EMC has forced a major, major improvement.

12. This experience makes me worry about Time Machine.