Comments on: CyberNotes: Powerful Free Backup Software

By: Syahid A.

Syahid A. — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:56:02 +0000

Cobian can be quite intimidating to new backup beginners. But yes, the features are awesome.

By: brian

brian — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:39:58 +0000

correct, I usually run a batch file every month to an external hard drive for off-site backup. It works ok with xcopy, but it sometimes says insufficient memory (even on a quad-core with 4gb ram, and 200gb hd space free), so I want to try cobain. I got it to work on every other type of drive, but when I put in the novell servers address (even mapped drives in windows, and direct paths (\\server\bla\bla)) it says it doesn’t exist. It works with synctoy although it is WAY too slow. I want a true backup and not just a mirrored directory. I skimmed over the guide to see if he mentioned anything but couldn’t find it.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:01:21 +0000

brian wrote:

I couldn’t get it to work with my mapped drives on netware. I tried with and without the Novell client in vista and couldn’t make it work. Maybe it’s vista, maybe it’s novell, maybe it’s me, but I’ve tried several things and it just says “The source directory “\\server\junk\junk\” doesn’t exist.

I assume that you don't have troubles browsing that network share in Windows Explorer?

By: brian

brian — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:19:47 +0000

I couldn’t get it to work with my mapped drives on netware. I tried with and without the Novell client in vista and couldn’t make it work. Maybe it’s vista, maybe it’s novell, maybe it’s me, but I’ve tried several things and it just says “The source directory “\\server\junk\junk\” doesn’t exist.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:44:38 +0000

Michael Dobrofsky wrote:

Cobian was something I played around with ages ago, but seemed too clunky for me - this appears to be a new version. I just use SyncToy now for backups. Simple, effective, all you need, really (for drive to drive backups).

I could see how it would be viewed as clunky since it has so many options, but the current interface is fairly well organized. As Leland said, it will take a little while to setup your backups but in the end it will be worth it.

By: leland

leland — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:37:00 +0000

Cobian Backup has a lot of power underneath the hood. If you are a techie it has everything you could ever want. If you are not a techie you might be intimidated by it, but if you take your time it really is fairly easy to use. I use it on a network to backup files to the server each night. I supply the proper login credentials during installtion and every thing else is simple. The login credentails for me are Domain\User for home users it would be MachineName\User and then the password. Besides zipping your backups you can also do straight file backup with no compression which will be faster. This program has saved me many times over in the last 5 years and it just keeps getting better. The author does accept donations so if you use it it would be good to consider giving a little something back.

By: satur9

satur9 — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:12:10 +0000

I’ve been using Cobian a while back but never got around to installing it again. Seems like it’s time to play around with it a bit more.

By: Michael Dobrofsky

Michael Dobrofsky — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:02:27 +0000

Cobian was something I played around with ages ago, but seemed too clunky for me – this appears to be a new version. I just use SyncToy now for backups. Simple, effective, all you need, really (for drive to drive backups).

By: Peter

Peter — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:56:37 +0000

Thanks for this one. I have been using Genie Backup Manager for a long time now but Cobian looks worth trying; on top of that it’s free! Thanks again.