On Line Backup not ready for Prime Time

[chuckm]

I have been attempting to make effective use of OnLine BackUp for over a week now on my 3 computers - My conclusion is it is useless. For the following reason:

(1) It Forces you to use 96 DPI font setting on your Monitor because the OnLine Backup Application window is not re-sizeable - there for if you have your monitor setting at 120 DPI you will not be able to see or use the Selection Buttons "Back Up Now", "Apply", or "Reset" making the application useless for those of us with enough vision problems to require a 120 DPI setting on the Monitor - we could switch between the two setting - but that requires a reboot - that's just crazy! I had to call Support and wade through endless Menu Options to get the answer to this. There is NO reference on Verizon Support pages that inform you how to get OnLine Backup Help either.

(2) Among all three computers doing this entire week (plus) I have succeeded in getting one computer backed up - and that took the better part of 3 days with the BackUp running the entire time. It actually takes that long to accomplish the back up (42 Gb of data)  - Two of my computers are Multi-processors, maxed out Ram, and solid high speed connections working perfectly on each computer it is NOT a connection issue. I stopped the backups on the one computer out of total frustration. Finally got my NetBook computer backed up in almost two days of running backup continuously. This renders the choices of Back Up hourly or Back Up Daily effectively useless. I have Quicken Backup services on one computer that backs up across the internet and it is lighting fast. So it definitely is not my system that's the problem. Further its not the operating system on the computers- One is XP, One is VISTA, and One is Windows 7 - the behavior is the same on all three.

(3) The system is designed to retain more than one copy of files and the number of copies to retain is selectable. However it appears not to do an incremental back up (backing up only the files that have changed since the last backup). But backs up the entire data multiple times - how useless is that? Looks more like Verizon wants to sell disk storage space rather than a backup service.

(4) If you do select Back Up Hourly - its a 7 x 24 back up with no way to setup times that you don't need to back up, like overnight when nothing is likely to change.

(5) The application appears not to Wake Up a sleeping computer for back up and it does suspend back up if the computer is goes into sleep mode - thus you can not really use the "greener" power setting choices on the computer you are backing up. The only way you can assure a backup is to turn off all Power Monitoring. And in several attempt to back up on My Windows 7 computer - when it did go to sleep not only did it suspend the backup process - it would never resume the back up - I gave it one whole day to wake up and it did not. The only choice you have is to Cancel the Backup and start over.

As a retired network engineer I do understand the issues involved here. I am still a good trouble shooter, I can address all the set up and configuration issues with networks and computers quite well. In my humble opinion this is a terrible application, poorly written and poorly implemented. Verizon needs to go back to the drawing board with this one. Not Ready for Prime Time.

[OldeMan1]

Chuckm, I do see selections for full, incremental and other types of backups within the software.  But I agree with your overall assessment of the Online Backup/Share product.

The Digidata software is using the C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\DigiData\Vault Explorer\Online Storage folder and there is no documentation of how this local disk area is used in conjunction with the Online Share Drive.  Very strange indeed.

I'm also seeing posts about Outlook pst files and that Microsoft doesn't "allow" these files to be transported over the network.  This is preposterous.  I don't believe there's anything that's looking for "pst" and not allowing transfers because of that.  And if there was something, you can get around that by using Windows Backup to backup your pst files (or any files) into one big .bkf file and try transferring that.  Nothing would know what was in that backup file.

However, good luck on getting something that big to move to the Verizon Online Share Drive.  I've been trying and concur that this product is definitely not ready for prime time.  The product reminds me a lot of Verizon customer service - pitiful.