There is certainly no shortage of choice when it comes to backup tools for Windows – there are so many backup programs available, it can be hard to work your way through the clutter and work out what is best for you. Some backup software is incredibly basic, offering little more than the ability to copy files from one location to another – and in reality this is something any computer user could do themselves. Genie Timeline Professional 2.0 is an advanced, and yet instantly accessible, backup tool which aims to make backing up data not only as simple as possible, but also incredibly flexible.

After the installation of Genie Timeline Professional, a wizard appears to guide you through the process of configuring backup options. A selection of backup destinations is displayed and once one has been chosen, the program invites you to select precisely what you would like to backup. The type of data that will be backed up is broken up into a number of categories, such as Office files, email, the contents of your desktop and pictures.

Quickly select the items you want to backup from installed components, files, your email and other data

With twelve categories of data to choose from, every time of data is covered and you can opt to block particular categories from a backup job if preferred. Many of the categories, such as Videos, Music, and Miscellaneous, can be customised so that certain files types will be backed up. The Disaster Recovery section ensures that the key components of Windows itself are backed up so they can be easily restored in the event of a system failure.

If you are backing up a large amount of data, you are going to need a reasonable amount of storage space available to house the backup. To help reduce this requirement, Genie Timeline Professional can compress backups and there is also the option of encrypting them and adding password protection. When creating a password, you will be advised as to the strength of a password so you can determine just how secure your data will be.

Backing up your data is easily achieved with a 3-step process

Once all of these settings have been configured, Genie Timeline Professional will create the initial backup. From this point on, the program can be used in Smart Mode or Turbo Mode to continually backup data as it is edited or created, so you can be certain that your backup always contains the latest versions of your files. In Turbo Mode, backups will always be created at full speed, using as many system resources as are required. Switching to Smart Mode means that backups will only be created or updated at full speed when your computer is idle, and when it is in use backups will be run at a lower priority.

Intelligent backups

If you have chosen to backup the contents of your desktop, you may already be considering the potential problems that could arise from having the backup continually updated in the background. For many people, the desktop is used as a temporary store for files – this may include files which are not needed for long, or files that need to be sorted out – and it is unlikely that you would want all of these to be backed up. Genie Timeline Professional creates a ‘no backup zone’ folder which can be used to store files which you do not necessarily want to backup – should you change your mind, simply move them to a location which is configured to be included in the backup.

Backups are continually updated using a predefined schedule, but this can be adjusted according to how often you create and edit files if required. To prevent system slowdown at inopportune moments, Game/Movie Mode can be enabled so that backups will not be created or updated while a video is playing or a game is running.

Genie Timeline Professional integrates with Explorer, and a new entry is added to the navigation pane. From here you can access all of the backups that have been created and a unique timeline is available to make it easy to home in on a backup that was created on a particular date. Backups can be browsed in the same way as any other folder and the option to restore files to their original location is just a couple of clicks away.

Disaster recovery

But Genie Timeline Professional is about more than just backing up individual files and folders, or the settings from individual programs. The Disaster Recovery option means that it is possible to backup your entire system so you can quickly get your computer back up and running should the worst happen. In order to take advantage of this feature you will need to create a Disaster Recovery startup disc. This disc can take the form of a virtual partition which will be made accessible through the boot menu when you start your computer.

You can also create the startup disc on a USB drive or create an ISO image that can be burned to CD or DVD. It would have been nice if the disc could have been burned directly from within the program, but as it stands you will have to rely on your own disc burning tool. It is also a shame that Genie Timeline Professional does not prompt to create the startup disc after installation – it is something that would be very easily forgotten until it is too late, although another computer could be used to create the disc if required.

Visual representation of the space remaining on your backup destination

Where Genie Timeline Professional succeeds is in its thoroughness. It is possible to backup every single file on your hard drive, but the program stop short of creating disc images. The flexibility of the program means that you are able to backup precisely what you want to, cutting out anything unnecessary, so the resulting backup file is no bigger than it needs to be. With the option of restoring individual files, different types of file, or your entire system, Genie Timeline Professional can be configured to work the way you want it to, and the backup process, after initial configuration is out of the way, is entirely automated so there are no concerns about having to manually update backups.