The Good
* Extremely easy to use:
o Gives recommendations on what drive to backup to.
o Allows for easy one-click selection of important files to backup, such as e-mails, documents, and eBooks.
o Has support for easy backup of iPod/iPhone/iPad and BlackBerry files.
o Has intelligent drive detection; automatically starts/stops backing up process based on if the backup drive is connected or not.
o Adds entries to Windows' right-click context menu for easy access to Timeline features.
o Allows users to search the contents of backups.
* Has multiple different backup "modes", allowing Genie Timeline Home to adapt to the current environment and not hinder a user's work.
* Has the ability to create bootable recovery media (CD/DVD, USB/flash drive, or partition-based).
* Allows users to not only recover the most recent backed up files, but also previous versions of backed up files.
* Users can receive e-mail notifications about backup status, errors, and warnings.
* Has the ability to display a graph which breaks down the contents of the backup drive for the user.
* Backups up to non-proprietary .ZIP format.

The Bad
* Lacks any sort of security measures in regards to protecting backed up files, such as encryption or password protection.
* Users can only create one "job" at a time; lacks the ability to support different backup "jobs".
* Lacks easy backup support for Android and Windows Mobile devices.
* Features list on the developer's web page and the Help file claim to allow the user to modify the files included in the "smart selection" filters, but I could not find any such feature while testing the program.
* Fairly large download size.

Free Alternatives
Genie Timeline Free [Freeware version of Home Edition]
GFI Backup
FBackup

For final verdict, recommendations, and full review please click here.

Ashraf  –  14 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+176)

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-Amazingly simple, useful software

I checked out the site and I am really pleased with what I see so far..

I read Ashraf's review and realized most of "The Bad" that he mentioned are available in the Professional version such as encryption and the smart selections filters but I definitely agree about the Android and Windows Mobile support!

Pros
*very easy to use
*basically backups everything of value to me
*perfect for a heavy laptop user like myself
*email notifications are very useful
*the way it gives details about the backup is very easy to understand
*disaster recovery is really impressive
*so far it has not impacted the performance of my PC

Cons
*Would be nice if it supported Windows mobile and Android
*would be great if it integrated with an online server so that I could backup online

*so far everything else seems to be great...

Sara Amicucci  –  14 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+69)

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I disagree with some of the so-called reviews. This is one of the best versioning document-backup utilities available. It's not an image backup utility, although it's great that GOTD is offering the Home version, which has important features that the free version doesn't, such as "disaster recovery" files (and boot disk), which should backup Windows. I've used the free version previously, and I don't have time (and don't want to waste the disk space and risk my OS installation) on testing the "disaster recovery" features.

There's a great deal to like about Genie Timeline Home 2.1, but there are also some annoyances. On the plus side, it has much better integration with Windows than many document-backup utilities. It's much faster than many such utilities at displaying your backup data. There are all sorts of handy options for shell integration. It supports long filenames and Unicode without issue (although I doubt it supports NTFS extended paths, I'm only aware of Altaro Oops!Backup supporting that).

On the downside, there's a lot of weirdness in the UI. There's Smart Selection which has presets for handling specific classes of files, and there's My Computer. While you can use both, you shouldn't select the same files/folders in both. My Computer allows exclusion filters by extension, which is applied to all My Computer files and folders (no per-folder filters). Under the main File, Preferences, menu item, you can select particular files and folders for global exclusion (Auto-Exclude). You can exclude My Computer files and folders via their right-click context menu in Explorer. So you need to familiarize yourself with the way Genie Timeline works. Viewing the Timeline is non-standard, there are limits on how it displays things, and it won't give the original Properties, which is very annoying. Still, the speed compared to competitive apps is impressive. Also, Genie Timeline displays some information in your browser, which I hate (some other apps do that but hide the fact via IE integration).

Genie Timeline Home takes volume snapshots (via VSS) at user-specified intervals, down to 30 minutes. So multiple changes within the specified interval will be lost. There are good points and bad points about snapshotting at intervals. It's generally better when working with a group of files, but generally isn't as good when working with an individual file (AJC Active Backup and FileHamster are individual-file based).

Genie Timeline is under the most active development of any document-backup utility that I'm aware of, so obvious gaps in its abilities are likely to be implemented relatively quickly.

Except for the UI weirdness and some lack of flexibility, about the only problem I have with Genie Timeline is one which is common for interval-snapshot utilities, which is high overhead, which can impact performance and interfere with Windows power management. Also, it really irritates me when developers don't use the Microsoft Installer, which everyone should.

Price-wise, I always have a problem with versioning document-backup utilities. They can be very good at handling document revisions, but they don't compare well (at all) in other respects to serious near-continuous backup utilities like StorageCraft ShadowProtect Desktop 4. Still, this is a great GOTD if you have a need and don't mind the overhead.

#14, blue, Genie Timeline is completely different from Comodo Time Machine, et al.

Fubar  –  14 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+65)

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@Ashraf: Security (256-bit AES encryption), and the editing of smart selection profiles are in the Pro edition of the software. The large download size is because of the bootable Disaster Recovery image, which is a fully-contained Windows installation.

Mahmoud Al-Qudsi  –  14 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+64)

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For those discussing backing up Outlook PST files with VSS, it doesn't work. Not just with this software, but with any backup software. Outlook modifies the format of the PST while it is running, and then changes it back to an offline mode when you close Outlook. If you make a backup while Outlook is running, even with VSS, it will be corrupt when you try to restore it. You may or may not be able to fix the corrupted PST with the Inbox Repair Tool...sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Pretty much your only option for backing up PST files is to shut down Outlook first; and it has to exit gracefully, killing the task (like via a script before the backup starts) will leave the PST file in a corrupted state.

I've had to troubleshoot Outlook issues since it first came out, and this has forever been a problem. At a previous job, all PST files were located on a local server so that they could be backed up nightly. Problem was, if the user left Outlook open, the backup was useless. And since the same users always left Outlook open, all of their backups were useless. If only Microsoft would modify the handling of a PST file to automatically revert to a saved state after x minutes of non-use, this problem would be eliminated.

Chas  –  14 years ago  –  Ritieni questo commento utile? sì | no (+59)

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