Personally I particularly like about X-Backup 2 things: 1) its advertising slogan "It's better to be safe than sorry"; 2) the way it's positioned. X-Backup can be used both in professional environment and for home computing. It is for all users, and especially for those who find a bit smarter programs to be a bit too sophisticated.

X-Backup is a tool to create archive files in zip format as well as a disk partition image. It allows to back up data to any kind of destination device: hard disk, external USB hard disk, writable CD-DVD or network drive.

X-Backup doesn't synchronize files and folders. It makes backup copies. The way the program works looks convincing. Offering rather a standard set of options for backup and restoring, X-Backup is for those who appreciate results. You might find X-Backup very user-friendly and easy-to-use because:

1. You will not have to choose among many options and operations.

2. Performed and planned backup processes are easy and convenient to check and follow.

3. You will not get complicated reports not conveying any ideas of how to react towards them.

A Wizard leads you through the basic steps of creating a new Definition: What, Where and How to backup. A Definition can be saved as a default one and can be reused later while creating other backup definitions.

Choosing Disk drives, we can create a disk partition image, Folders – check the directories to create zip file archives, etc. The presence of the rest of icons just adds to convenience and presumably quickens the browsing.

We can perform a Full, an Incremental or First full then incremental backups; set retention period (to automatically remove old-fashioned archives), and decide whether to encrypt archived information and to apply include, exclude lists.

The main window summarizes definition information: the list of all created definitions is on the left pane; the settings for a chosen definition – on the right.

Details of performed backups are displayed when we navigate through the log file tree.

As an every respectable backup program, X-Backup has a flexible schedule to carry out timely backups of changing data. We can specify when to start, when to end and how often to run a task.

What is particular about scheduling with X-Backup is that a definition and its schedule are set separately. A new task (schedule) is created in the Backup Timeline option, here we can also change some tasks properties, to run or remove them. One of the program's advantages is the pictorial rendition of what and when to be done: the Timeline window allows to track performed and planned tasks.

Another convenient option is the Backup report. It gives a status of each backup job which can be filtered by definition and by date. Actually, the report presents done/failed notices which are easy to comprehend indeed.

Finally, some words about one more feature, to my thinking more entertaining than really essential. Backup Geography allows to quickly check a definition backup destination... It's customizable, by the way: if you don't like a vertical orientation, you can change it to a horizontal one.

All in all, X-Backup does what it claims to do. It does not synchronize directories; it does not have an option to send email notifications at the completion of a backup process, it lacks some other "inessential" options. But... if you find X-Backup to be a bit too artless, you are welcome to try, for example, Backup-2006 Studio by the same developer.

X-Backup keywords: backup, data, restore, zip, disk image, recovery, disaster