Backup Now (BNW) is a software package for backing up complete drives, partitions or individual files, to write-able CD's. It sells for $80 from the vendor on the Internet where it is upgradeable from the boxed Ver. 2.2.16 by a free 3.2MB file. At minimum, BNW requires Win 95/98/ME, Pentium 90, 16 MB of RAM, 5 MB hard drive, and a supported CD-R/RW unit. Installation from a CD and subsequent upgrade were straightforward, and the backup information and instructions that came in a 90-page User Guide were excellent.

The term 'backup' implies that there exist an original and a duplicate of whatever is backed-up. Also implied is that if the original is somehow destroyed, the backup duplicate is not simultaneously destroyed and can be used to restore the original. Therefore, it seems plausible that the original and the backup are not stored on the same storage medium. Also, an additional aspect of backing up should be recognized; in creating and storing the backup, one can either store an exact copy of the original or, to save MB storage space, one can create and store a compressed version (via special software) of the original.

With BNW one can create three types of backups (but only to write-able CD's): simple copies, normal data compression, and maximum data compression. The backup process is implemented from a window similar to the Win Explorer window, allowing one to easily choose files, partitions, or drives for backup. Supported are incremental and differential backups, append or overwrite of existing-data, and backups across multiple CD's, if required. Backups can be restored either to original or to alternate locations. The process itself is implemented in three steps: What to Backup (choice of items); Where to Backup (automatic CD-R/RW); How to Backup (differential, incremental, or all files). Additionally, BNW contains two useful utilities: Create a bootable Recovery CD or diskette; Backup and Restore the Windows Registry.

I backed up the Windows folder, which ran about 1.03GB according to Folder Properties. With maximum compression, BNW took 1:26 to do the backup and ended up with a 1.55 GB backup file on a 650 MB CD. However, two files, 7.4MB, could not be included, and the software asked for an additional CD to finish the job, which I canceled.

The BNW software did its job. The bottleneck was the 4Ð, RW, CD unit used for backup.