Second Copy
 

What's It Do?

Second Copy is a backup utility designed for Windows 9x/ME/NT42000/XP. It makes a backup of data files to another directory, disk, or computer across a network. It then monitors the source files and keeps the backup updated with new or changed files and runs in the background with no user interaction.


Does it do what it promises?

Reviewer 1. Yes, very much so.

Reviewer 2. Yes. This program is well described on its Web site. I found that the tour of the software, although intended to interest potential clients, also provides a few little insights into some of its nooks and crannies.

Reviewer 3. Yes.

Reviewer 4. Yes. The Second Copy Website promotes it as the perfect backup solution, but without a lot of fanfare; however, the user needs to know what to backup. It's great for someone who is editing lots of documents (such as a Website creator) but I wouldn't use it as a general purpose backup to copy all system settings, registry, etc.

Reviewer 5. Yes, it backs up files automatically whenever changes are made.

Reviewer 6. It performs remarkably well and accomplished what it says it will. Once the rules are defined, the program operates in the background.

Reviewer 7. It did everything I asked it to. I tested the program only in the ways I would ordinarily backup files: 1) Backup to a mapped network drive; 2) Backup to a non-mapped network share; 3) Backup to a another hard-disk; 4) Synchronized files with my laptop. With each backup "destination", I used a different "method" (Duplicate; Exact Copy; Exact Compressed; and Synchronized). Other (promoted) "destination" locations (i.e. Backup to CD-RW and\or Tape Drive) were skipped because I either did not have the device (Tape drive) or because I didn't view it as something I would ever do with this software (incremental backups to CD-RW).


Was it easy to install?

Reviewer 1. Yes, there were no problems installing it on my system.

Reviewer 2. Yes. The installation was smooth, allowing me to place it in my own default location without a hitch.

Reviewer 3. Yes.

Reviewer 4. Yes.

Reviewer 5. Yes.

Reviewer 6. Very easy, just follow the prompts.

Reviewer 7. No problems at all.


Good points.

Reviewer 1. Easy to set up with a myriad of options; however, the defaults are the intuitive ones so it doesn't overwhelm a novice who can just answer "what", "where", and "when". The scheduling makes backups very easy.

Reviewer 2. There are many backup programs on the market, including some excellent Freeware products, and I have tried out quite a few. When I get a new one, my tendency is to set it up to backup all my critical data folders. This often takes considerable effort and time; however, employing the Second Copy concept of "Profiles", I found myself using the Profile Wizard, creating profiles of each data set as I went through a normal computer day. As I embarked on a new activity, I set up a profile for the files and folders related to that activity. For example, when I checked my email, I set up a profile of its data folders; when I started on a new work project, I set it up as a profile; when I started my handheld, I set up a profile for my contacts list and appointments; when I had to create an invoice, I did a profile of my financial management software, and so on. Each one now runs in the background, monitoring and backing up the files that are changed, each one on its own timetable. So even if I turn off the computer before my current Backup program runs, a scheduled "Full Backup", Second Copy has already been quietly and unobtrusively saving extra copies of my data, without my paying any attention to it. When I bring up the Second Copy screen, I can see all the profiles and check on any one of them. When the last backup is done, if there were any errors during the backup, I can run a backup immediately, create a new profile, view the files inside a profile either with a built-in zip viewer, or by using my default unzipper, and so on. And of course, my new Reviews Profile is there now.

Reviewer 3. The Wizard was nice and easy to use. I didn't even notice when the application was running, it had no impact on the system's response. The ability to simply copy the files made it very easy to restore an older version. I also liked that it wasn't limited to only a simple copy but could also be used to synchronize between multiple machines. It has a very simple interface.

Reviewer 4. It was unobtrusive: once a profile has been created, forget about it. Second Copy will copy via a background process on a scheduled basis. It was fairly easy to create a profile. There are lots of options (simple, compression, synchronize, move and delete, etc.) that could be used in a variety of applications other than just backup. Open files can't be backed up, which is a good thing for a spreadsheet or word processor; but Second Copy does notify with a popup box to inform what error occurred and why.

Reviewer 5. Simple to learn, it was pretty much a "set and forget" process.

Reviewer 6. Easy to Install, just follow the prompts. Good detailed help section. If a problem is encounters, simply pressing F1 will bring up a detailed Help section. Easy to create individual and group profiles.

Reviewer 7. Pricing is superb at roughly $30 per license and includes very reasonable discounts as you increase the number of licenses. Adequately documented, I found every answer to every question quickly and easily. I especially liked the Synchronize and Compressed Exact Copy methods. It successfully handled every "potential pitfall" I threw at it, mostly derived from changing settings in a profile to see how it would react to it, or changing destinations (where it stores the backup). It didn't miss a beat. I excluded certain large files and it faithfully ignored them. I set it to save to both mapped network drives and an unmapped (but shared) network folder on my wife's computer downstairs. This was to see if it required a drive letter or not. If the destination folder was available, it had no difficulties whatsoever getting there, mapped or not. For the Synchronize method, I set it up to synch the (ever so cluttered) My Documents folder on my PC and told it to record (mimic) all changes I made there to my laptop, and then proceeded to extensively reorganize everything in the original to see if it would follow suit. It did. Every file I deleted or moved elsewhere out of My Documents, it dependably reproduced in the backup so that the two looked identical in every way. Even nicer, Synchronize provides an "err-on-the-side-of-caution" option that also saves a backup of the files it must delete when reproducing the exact copy of My Documents. Something of a second chance folder to me, since I'm always so quick to empty that recycle bin, and on the rare occasion, wish I could get a file back. Every addition, too, was reliably reproduced. When a file was in use, it popped up a little message telling me so, so I could close the file or tell Second Copy to ignore it for now. Set to incrementally update any changes every twenty minutes, it ran quietly in the background and did so with no PC performance degradation whatever. I never even noticed it, exactly what a good file backup tool should do. Very nice.


Weak points.

Reviewer 1. Be prepared for a long setup time for large folders. I used My Documents which contained 1.53 gb, and it took over three hours to copy to a remote computer. Of course, I had it comparing files as well, so that would at least double the time of just copying. Still, over three hours is excessive.

Reviewer 2. There was only one place that I find that I had to pay careful attention to what I was doing. When I first set up a new profile, I like to run it right away, to do a Full Backup of all the files and sub-folders in that particular folder. From then on, incremental backups are satisfactory. It was not totally clear to me how to do this well. Eventually, I did find a system which involved setting some advanced properties, running the backup, then going back again to the advanced properties and changing one of the parameters. At this point, I would have liked a question to pop up and ask me if I wanted to do a first-time full backup. After doing that, I could have set up my additional properties and just left them to run from then on. Fortunately, the designers have devised a smart kind of running tool-tip window just below the place where the user is working. So as you go through each step, there is a running help menu written clearly enough that people with little computer experience will be able to do what they want.

Reviewer 3. Selecting the properties of a profile did not show the properties. Instead, it took me through the Wizard. I would have preferred to see only the last page of the Wizard with tabs showing details such as what, when, how, etc. This is mostly just an annoyance and doesn't affect the program's performance.

Reviewer 4. As space is usually a premium for most, the default (express) should contain compression. To be really useful as a backup tool, Second Copy needs to automatically backup files such as Web favorites, Outlook PST files, address books, common document or spreadsheet extensions, etc. The inability to backup open files is not good for an email client such as Outlook or Lotus Notes. I had to exit my email client, wait until the file is copied, then reload the application. Background copying does slow other applications, enough to notice. My Lotus Notes client hung for a few seconds during a background copy to a different folder on the same drive. In Custom Copying, when a specific file is selected, the application should provide all the file information (size, data, thumbnail, details, etc.) as does Explorer.

Reviewer 5. Second Copy was just a bit tricky for me to learn and master.

Reviewer 6. The only area for improvement I found would be the system lag time as large backups occur. One can notice a slight slowdown in system performance.

Reviewer 7. I didn't notice any, and I was really trying to get it to mess up.


Other comments.

Reviewer 1. In a Windows 98 environment, this program is much better than Windows Briefcase for backing up and synchronizing files on a laptop (or any PC) with a server, and for simple backups to an external device. The company was very responsive to inquiry and customer support is important.

Reviewer 2. I find this to be a remarkable product. It is easy to install and very flexible in set up profiles for second Copies of files. It has an amazingly wide range of tools to accommodate all kinds of situations. I had little reason to call on technical support, but found them to be quickly responsive. It seems that they want feedback from their clients and pay attention to their requests and suggestions. All in all, I find this to be an exceptionally well-designed and impressive product. And, for the quality and range of its implementation, it is very reasonably priced.

Reviewer 3. It would be nice if the program had multiple levels of errors. A file-in-use error should not be as severe as, say, a destination-missing error or some other catastrophic problem.

Reviewer 4. None.

Reviewer 5. Once I became familiar with the program, it was a simple matter to set it up and backup files I use and modify often.

Reviewer 6. A history of up to 25 document changes can be saved. There are six ways to copy files: Simple Copy; Exact Copy which deletes any files in the destination that are not in the original folder; One can define what files to include or exclude in the copy process; One can apply compression to the copy operation (compression uses PKZip format); One can password protect the compresses files; Profiles can be categorized into different groups such as daily backups, weekly archives, or word processing documents; one can even use date parameters such as $date$ in the profile names, for example to create Daily Report - 20021022.zip. Second Copy 2000 is very easy to setup. It does exactly what it is designed to do. I can now backup my files/folders to another location as well as copy the important data to CD-RW disks for the off-site storage. Once a profile has been created, it can be modified by simply selecting, clicking on Properties, make your changes then save it.

Reviewer 7. The option to save an exact copy in a zip file was very much like the synchronize option, but I didn't see an "err-on-the-side-of-caution" option there. Synchronize was very nice for keeping files fresh on my laptop, but this would be my true backup option of choice, because of the compression. However, I do occasionally delete files I later wish I hadn't and I thought that was a very nice touch in the Synchronize method. I would like to see that in all the Exact Copy.


Will you continue to use it?

Reviewer 1. I will in my Windows 98 partition, and I look forward to using it on my next laptop with Windows XP.

Reviewer 2. Absolutely.

Reviewer 3. Yes.

Reviewer 4. Yes, for some applications such as documents; but I won't rely on it as my single backup program.

Reviewer 5. Yes.

Reviewer 6. Yes, I will definitely continue to use it.

Reviewer 7. Oh, yes. I was very impressed with its flexibility and reliability. It is an excellent addition to any backup routine. When used with a regular, full backup routine, I can't imagine needing anything more.


Operating Systems used in this review: Windows 98SE, XP Home, XP Pro, networks.

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