Review: Amiga backup software comparison

matt3k

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I went on a journey trying to find the best backup software for my needs and it has been quite a journey indeed.

Here are the ones I tested:
Abackup 5.22
AMI-Back 2.0i
Diavolo 3.7 Pro
Quarterback 7.3.1a

Here is the test system:
Amiga 3000D
Drives formated in PFS3
Cyberstorm 060 MKIII
Acard 2000 SUP SATA to 68pin SCSI
Mediator 3000Di
Radeon with DVI out
X Surf 100
QNAP NAS for backing up to
Rapidroad TCP/IP stack
SMBFS

My goal was to backup my Amiga partitions to a file on the NAS.



First Place:
AMI-Back 2.0i - This is a great package and was the clear winner. I bought this in the early 90's and have been using it ever since. It is very reliable the fastest to perform a backup. This speed is due to the fact that you cannot choose different compression routines and the default is clearly for speed and not compression. The software will allow you to backup many different methods (Full, Selective, Image, 911 recovery) and I used Full and Selective for my tests. I tested a full backup without filtering the archive bit and then a selective backup only backing up files without the archive bit. This is the only program, other than Abackup, that wrote over the network and AMI-Back will write to and restore with up to a 4 gig file. The program also came with a scheduler to automate the backup, the scheduler works great and takes manual intervention away from backup which is a great thing! The only issues I ran into were the interface is old and you have to manually type drives and file name, and it uses index files that write to s:. The index files are annoying in that you need to keep them to restore data, you can rebuild an index file so if you lose them you still can restore your data. You also have to be careful when you restore the file so the file actually restores to where it is suppose to. If you don't have the drive selected, it will write to what ever drive is selected. I would read the manual for AMI-Back or frankly all the options, to get the right setup and know what is going on with them.

Second Place:
Abackup 5.22- I did try using this for many months since it had a modern interface but, it became unstable and gave strange errors and locks up hard occasionally. I attribute this to somewhat to sloppy programming of Abackup, because it has given me issues in the past and all the other backup software run flawlessly. Abackup (when it works) has all the modern features I was looking for and a decent interface. It does not come with a automatic backup scheduler, but it has it where it counts and will restore reliable on my other A4000 (that isn't hacked to death like the 3k and on an older BB4.)

Third Place:
Diavolo 3.7 Pro - This was a decent package and was similar in capabilities to AMIBack, but it had a newer interface and could select different compression methods. It had decent error trapping to protect backups, which was nice to guarantee a valid backup. The only feature that dropped it way down in the list is that is would not write across the network to the NAS, at least is gave a controlled error and didn't run to guru land. It also didn't have a scheduler, like in AMI-Back that I have grown used to.

Fourth Place:
Quarterback 7.3.1a - This was really a disappointment. The interface was not clean and often showed prior screens. It would guru once you tried selecting the NAS to back up to. It is between Ami-Back and Diavolo for the interface and usability. I did backup locally with it to test it out, and it worked rather well. It has a lot of add on programs I didn't test.


Update 5/16/2021: I have been slowly moving over to MOS (5th time now lol) and tested AMI-Back with MOS and it doesn't work when writing the index file. Hope to get this resolved sometime.

Update 11/14/2023: AmiBack has a bug Piru, from the MorphOS Team, took the painstaking time to find some time ago for me (Thanks Piru! - MorphOS Team rocks). I have since switched to BackUp by Deniil (OnyxSoft) as it is still supported and works best for me and best handles the multiple flavors I run (MorphOS and AmigaOS 3.x). See here for more info: https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=13142&forum=9#153354
 
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I'm using Diavolo Backup 2000 on my A1200 system, and it's really suits my needs (many options for backup, and many compression methods each one with its compression rate option as well).
 
You should try Backman, a really good backup system
I tried that one also, it was pretty buggy with newer versions of MorphOS. It hasn't been updated since 2005, probably due for one :).
I'm using Diavolo Backup 2000 on my A1200 system, and it's really suits my needs (many options for backup, and many compression methods each one with its compression rate option as well).
I write to my NAS and Diavolo doesn't do that. Amiback did that great, too bad it has unrepairable bugs.
 
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