Solway's Plain Backup

Solway's Plain Backup is a security application designed to help you back up files or entire directories to a safe location, whether it's on the same hard disk, a removable drive, or a network location. It offers support for two copy methods and synchronization, among other features.

Simple setup and interface

Setting up this tool is a fast and simple task that shouldn't give you any trouble. It's wrapped in a user-friendly GUI which consists of a standard window with a minimalistic look, where you can view the default backups profiles.

Back up the registry and create custom backup profiles

Apart from the fact that you can back up the system registry, it's possible to add new backup profiles to the list by filling several details, including the profile name and operation type: copy files and folders, or execute a file.

Execute files or copy files/folders

If you want to execute a file, all you have to do is point it out and enter command-line parameters. When copying files and folders, you can indicate the source and destination, copy mode (copy all files or only updated ones), as well as include or exclude subfolders.
A few advanced settings are available for more experienced users, enabling them to generate destination timestamps as well as propagate deletions regularly or only once (i.e. synchronization).

Manage multiple profiles with multiple items

Solway's Plain Backup lets you include as many items as you want into the backup profiles, which means that it can simultaneously copy files from different source folders to different destination folders. Alternatively, you can just run backups from a single selected item (one source folder to one destination folder).
It's possible to create as many backup profiles as you want, edit their properties anytime, delete items, or copy or move them to other profiles. Moreover, you can copy the synchronization settings of the first item from a profile and apply them to all other items from the same profile.

Run it with low or high priority, view logs, and export settings

The software application is capable of running with low or high priority, depending on whether you want to favor speed or system resources. Plus, it automatically records its activity to logs and lets you examine them. Program settings can be saved as an INI file and imported later or on another computer running Solway's Plain Backup.

Evaluation and conclusion

We haven't come across any stability issues in our tests, thanks to the fact that Solway's Plain Backup didn't hang, crash or display error messages. Its impact on computer performance was minimal.
All in all, this tool comes bundled with a lot of useful options to help you perform backup jobs with different settings, so you can definitely take it for a spin.