Data Backup Software and Service

Usage

Let me get straight to the point. The Double Image user interface can be outright confusing. To see what I mean check out the backup window.

The left-hand pane above shows the option selections for a given operation, but the labeling may not reflect the actual operation you're working on. It makes you wonder, at any given point, whether you're backing things up or restoring them. The confusion extends to the restore window.

Here you're about to do a restore, but the options pane still shows the options pertaining to backups and are labeled that way, except for the orange title bar. This would be confusing to anyone.

This has been worked on, to some extent in the Release version of Double Image 5 [5.00.17], but some work may still need to be done. Trust the buttons and check-boxes rather than the headings and you won't go too far wrong.

Similarly confusing is the idea of placing the destination address bar at the top rather than the bottom of the window. Most people are used to a workflow that starts at the top and goes down, so why reverse it? Same for the Backup and Restore buttons. Why it’s necessary to have both buttons onscreen at the same time is a mystery.

The irony here is that the "easy user interface" is one of the features promoted by the vendors of Double Image.

Quite frankly, I cannot agree on this point.

Performance

Happily the actual backup and restore performance of Double Image was much more impressive than the interface.

To start with Double Image is one of the few backup programs that is multi-threaded. That means you can run multiple instances of the program. This makes it possible to have more than one backup/restore jobs running at the same time. While not an advantage to the average home user, it's a desirable feature for more complex environments.

Multithreading also offers performance advantages and in fact Double Image was the fastest of the programs tested, to backup data using compression though, on the downside, the file produced was not as compressed as much as some of the other products.

Backups to CD-R and hard drive went off without any problems. Restores were about as easy and you're given a number of options about how to handle the inevitable file conflicts of restoring a file that already exists.

Backing up to CD-R required pre-formatting the disc for drag-and-drop operations, but that aside, it worked well.

Double Image offers the option of backing up the Windows Registry but there are no options for Favorites nor email files. These can of course be entered manually providing you know the file name locations however many home users would have no idea.

Another omission is the ability to encrypt backup data sets. This could be a serious problem for those with sensitive data.

Help & Support

A range of support options are in place in case you really get lost, including help on the program menu bar and online help. If you're forced to go online, there is an excellent FAQ, an online user forum plus a form allowing access to company support personnel. Be advised that there doesn’t seem to be any direct phone support.

Table of Features

A very fast, full featured backup program which, with some work on the user interface, could be a real winner.