Personal Backup X5 is Intego’s latest version of the backup program that handles bootable copies as well as ordinary backups and folder or disk synchronisation. I ran Personal Backup through a number of tests and found it to be a solid performer.

I tested Personal Backup X5 with the general purpose backup, the bootable copy and the synchronisation. The general backup was tested both ways, i.e. I first backed up a disk and then deleted a folder of files from the disk to see how restore goes.

For the bootable copy test, I took a Micromat Protogo created bootable CompactFlash card and tried to duplicate it onto a 500 GB FireWire disk.

Good Interface Design

Finally, the synchronisation test involved a similar method. Personal Backup faired well on the backup and restore test, and on the synchronisation test. I had a bit of problems with the bootable copy test, but this could be due to bugs in other programs that were running alongside Personal Backup.

Fir its core usage, Personal Backup X5 succeeded with flying colours, but it also succeeded in the area of interface design. Some people seem to hate what Intego has done with the X5 range of products, but I happen to like the Automator alike way of setting up a backup script. It’s easy to do, easy to understand what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it.

The options for creating a script revolve around a limited set of steps, starting with the preparation phase and ending with the mount or eject phase. One step can be a scheduling set-up that will allow you to automate backups --at least when Intego’s daemons are allowed to run in the background. Another step involves setting up filters so that you don’t backup everything --a complete disk. Scripts can be saved for later use. It’s all very intuitive and effortless, except perhaps for one minor thing.

When you need to restore files, you must first load or select the script that created the backup in the first place. This is mentioned in the manual, but there are no interface clues that visually show you how to restore, besides the restore button, which only becomes visible when you’ve already loaded the appropriate script.

On the other hand, loading the appropriate script can be as easy as dragging the disk icons into their appropriate well in the interface. Counter-intuitive I would say, is that the disks must be dragged in the same well as when you started the backup initially. Luckily, the program doesn’t allow you to make mistakes, so there’s no harm in having it wrong.

Bootable copies should work, but I couldn’t make them work --I am not 100% sure this is due to Personal Backup as my old machine sometimes behaves rather strange, but it wouldn’t be the first program that can’t create bootable discs without extra help.

In general, however, I do find Personal Backup a good, robust program, at least for backing up and synchronisation.