Ideal backup tool for H&M: AJC Active Backup

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Tim Green
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Ideal backup tool for H&M: AJC Active Backup

Unread post by Tim Green »

Keep your H&M projects safe with AJC Active Backup

AJC Active Backup is a tool that has been mentioned several times on the forum but I think it's now time to put in a serious plug for it. This is something I do very rarely on the forum, but this is a product that is so good and so useful that every serious technical author should have it, and it only costs $29.

AJC Active Backup is quite simply the best tool available anywhere for keeping your Help & Manual projects backed up and safe. I can't recommend this program enough, there is really nothing like it and it is seriously, seriously good.

In addition to keeping your work backed up it also gives you access to all previous versions of your project, as far back as you like (depending on how you set it up). And it does all this in a highly-compact, compressed archive format that only saves the differences between each version.


How it works:

Basically, you just tell Active Backup which directories you want to monitor and which file types you want to keep backed up. For Help & Manual that would be *.HMX, all the graphics file formats you use and any other file types you might be storing externally, like your own JavaScript files, CSS files and so on.

Once you have done this Active Backup automatically adds the current version to the archive every time you save. This means you are always up to date, you always have access to all versions of your projects and your data is always safe -- provided you place the backup archive on a second hard drive or a network drive. (You can save on the same hard drive that you are working on but that wouldn't make sense -- the point of a backup is having it somewhere else in case your hard disk dies.) It also comes with a free program for browsing your archive, comparing the contents with the current versions and restoring your backups.

You can configure Active Backup very precisely to ensure that you don't keep too many versions and you can tell it to purge older archives so that they include smaller numbers of versions if you want. But even if you keep everything the archive is still incredibly compact.

Check it out here: http://www.ajcsoft.com/AJCActBk.php
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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John Waller
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Unread post by John Waller »

A similar product, as far as I can tell, for the same price is Keepsafe by Stardock.

http://www.stardock.com/products/keepsafe

Review available here

I'm planning to have a close look at both.
Regards

John Waller
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Van Swofford
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Re: Ideal backup tool for H&M: AJC Active Backup

Unread post by Van Swofford »

Tim Green wrote: ..... but this is a product that is so good and so useful that every serious technical author should have it.....
I agree wholeheartedly, and extend that to include software developers. AJC Active Backup has proven to be an invaluable tool for me in backing up my Delphi projects as I develop them. As soon as I save a file, into the archive it goes, and I can go back to a previous version any time I need to undo all the (erroneous) changes I just made. I heartily recommend it. I also use AJC Directory Synchronizer, equally recommended.

Van Swofford
"Half of what I say is meaningless..." -- John Lennon
"Your job is to figure out which half" -- Van Swofford
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Dennis Delaney
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Unread post by Dennis Delaney »

A similar product, as far as I can tell, for the same price is Keepsafe by Stardock
One of the disadvantages of Keepsafe is that it doesn't add all existing files to the archive. Every time you add a folder to Instant Backup's archive it asks you whether you want to add all existing matching files the the archive first.

I use it for all my work, not just Help & Manual, and it has never let me down. I've never felt any need to look further because it does everything I want. :)
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John Waller
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Unread post by John Waller »

One of the disadvantages of Keepsafe is that it doesn't add all existing files to the archive. Every time you add a folder to Instant Backup's archive it asks you whether you want to add all existing matching files the the archive first.
Thanks for that, Dennis. Good to know.
I use it for all my work, not just Help & Manual, and it has never let me down. I've never felt any need to look further because it does everything I want.
Are you referring to AJC Active Backup or Keepsafe?
Regards

John Waller
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Dennis Delaney
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Unread post by Dennis Delaney »

Hi John,
Are you referring to AJC Active Backup or Keepsafe?
Sorry, my bad. I use AJC Active Backup, it rocks. :D
Cheers,
Dennis
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Martin Wynne
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Re: Ideal backup tool for H&M: AJC Active Backup

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Tim Green wrote:Basically, you just tell Active Backup which directories you want to monitor and which file types you want to keep backed up. For Help & Manual that would be *.HMX, all the graphics file formats you use and any other file types you might be storing externally, like your own JavaScript files, CSS files and so on.

Once you have done this Active Backup automatically adds the current version to the archive every time you save.
Hi Tim,

Just to add to that.

H&M keeps the .hmx file open (to prevent a second instance of H&M from modifying it). This means that if you want Active Backup to provide a rollback function for every time you save the project file, you need to select the "Backup open files" option in Active Backup and add *.hmx to the list of such files. If you don't do that Active Backup will archive the hmx file only once when you finally close H&M.

Note also that Active Backup fails if the file name includes unicode characters.

Martin.
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John Waller
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Unread post by John Waller »

H&M keeps the .hmx file open (to prevent a second instance of H&M from modifying it). This means that if you want Active Backup to provide a rollback function for every time you save the project file, you need to select the "Backup open files" option in Active Backup and add *.hmx to the list of such files. If you don't do that Active Backup will archive the hmx file only once when you finally close H&M.
Thanks Martin. That's really useful to know.
Regards

John Waller
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Tim Green
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Re: Ideal backup tool for H&M: AJC Active Backup

Unread post by Tim Green »

Martin,
Martin Wynne wrote:H&M keeps the .hmx file open (to prevent a second instance of H&M from modifying it).
And to add to that: Note that although the .HMX file is kept "open" while you are working on it, this is only for preventing second accesses to it. While you are working you are actually working on the temporary copy, not on the original .HMX file. That would be much too risky, because then it would get corrupted if anything happened, like a power failure. While you are working, all the automatic writes are made to the temporary copy of the file -- for example when you switch to a different topic after editing a topic or when you select Refresh Topic in the Topics menu. However, every time you save the file (i.e. with Ctrl+S) the save is made to the original .HMX.
If you don't do that Active Backup will archive the hmx file only once when you finally close H&M.
That's correct, but it's only because H&M has the file open to prevent unauthorized attempts to open it a second time. H&M is actually saving the original file every time you save it, and Active Backup follows suit if it's permitted to save open files.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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jamesp
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Unread post by jamesp »

I use both AJC Active Backup and AJC Directory Synchronizer.

I'm so pleased with Active Backup I wrote a review which you can read here.....
http://file-synchronization.prior-it.co ... ckup.shtml
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