Windows Phone Thoughts: Saving Your Bacon with Spb Backup 1.0

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Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Saving Your Bacon with Spb Backup 1.0

Posted by Don Tolson in "SOFTWARE" @ 03:00 PM


Trial #2 – Full Backup, Hard Reset, Full Restore
OK, so a restore after a soft-reset went OK, but the REAL TEST is restoring your unit after a hard reset, right?

For this trial, I disconnected the cradle from the laptop, but left the Pocket PC in the cradle, so it could work with full power. (Some backup programs complain when you’re not ‘plugged in’ but Spb Backup didn’t seem to mind either way). So, I did another full system backup out to my CF card (no errors encountered this time), hard reset the unit and went through the usual ‘move the doctor’s appointment’ setup routines. Now for the moment of truth. I double tapped on the backup executable I had just created, and selected full restore. The first thing Spb Backup did was to remind me that the System Clock needed to be set properly before proceeding, and it provided a button to go directly to the utility to do this. I suppose having the clock set properly would allow the Restore to determine where it was restoring to and keep Activesync happy. So, after setting the clock, it came back to the Restore and I tapped Next to continue. The Restore progress screen appeared and things went smoothly from there.

After the restore was finished, I completed the required soft reset and held my breath. Would I be back to where I was before? Well, for the most part, yes. I only noticed one small thing. Activesync seemed to get confused about which files it was supposed to sync with and which ones were new, etc. For some reason, it now had all the files it was supposed to in the My Documents folder on the Pocket PC, but none on the laptop. To fix this problem, I finally had to copy all the files over from the Pocket PC back to the laptop, using Activesync’s Explorer module, then everything seemed to settle down properly.

As far as everything else was concerned, I was back right where I started from. All the applications I loaded were there, hacks I had made to the registry were still in place, and as before, Activesync didn’t try to resynchronize all my appointments, contacts, tasks, etc. All the PIM stuff was just as I had left it! Whew, what a relief!

Custom Backups
When you select Custom Backup, instead of just giving you the typical folder/file tree to navigate, Spb simplifies the process by combining items into the major categories which most people would want to backup/retrieve.


Figure 11: ...and what would you like to backup???

If you want to be even more selective, on items like My Documents and System Data, you can tap on the item and then on the Options button to get to a screen where you can define specifically what to copy.

Scheduled Backups
In Schedule Backups, you first determine the days and times at which the backup will occur.


Figure 12: Setting up a Backup Schedule

As you can see from the screen, Spb Backup assumes a weekly schedule, but you can easily change that to daily if you wish. After defining the schedule, you then tell Spb Backup where the backup files should be stored and how many versions to keep.


Figure 13: Location and Numbers of Backups for Scheduled Backup

Then, you proceed through the same screens as with the Custom Backup, to define what should be included.

Conclusions
I’ve now completed numerous full and selective backups and restores, with no further problems at all. I’m quite comfortable that Spb Backup can bring me back to life easily and consistently – even from a hard reset. (As long as I remember that backup first!) The press release for this version of Spb Backup mentions the ability to backup and restore to your desktop, but I couldn't see it in the candidate software provided. Hopefully, it will be in the 'real' release.

Don is an Associate Director of Systems Development for Fujitsu Consulting – struggling to keep Windows Mobile 5 operating stably on his Dell Axim X50v... (Thank goodness for a backup program that works!)

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