GRBackPro by GRSoftware is average data backup software. With additional features and better navigation, this program would have ranked much higher. The price of the program is reasonable for the strength of its capabilities. However, it appears as if the program is from awhile back and GRSoftware has tacked little changes on top of it rather than choosing to overhaul the interface to meet the developments of its competitors. While it's still a good program, a newer, sleeker interface could go a long way towards making it a true competitor against the other programs in this category.
GRBackPro is designed specifically for backing up data, offering backup of single files or folders, but not the entire system. (If you want to back up your entire system, check out Norton Ghost.)
GRBackPro allows you to include or exclude particular types of files, making custom backups convenient. You can perform full, incremental, differential and registry backups, and even backup files while using them. You can schedule backups and verify data integrity after you make a backup.
But GRBackPro does not send a backup to a remote FTP location or create a boot disk. GRBackPro also doesn't allow you to make an image backup.
We had no trouble installing and setting up GRBackPro, but the rest of the program isn't user friendly. GRBackPro gives so much information at once that it's difficult to see the steps necessary to complete a backup.
To navigate, GRBackPro has tabs at the top of the screen: jobs, backup, restore, schedule, options, report, and progress. You click a tab to specify a task. Simple enough, but several options pop up, asking you to specify settings, preferences, locations—some of the choices are quite technical and are not explained well.
Even though the tabs contain choices relevant to a particular task, a novice may find these difficult to manage because it isn't clear what step is next or even what choice is best. You must be familiar with the correct sequence and settings in order to do a successful backup and restore. While all these choices are necessary, a step-by-step arrangement with relevant explanations along the way would be easier for a novice.
GRBackPro backed up and restored our selected data perfectly; we had no trouble with errors.
GRBackPro help files include general information, a user guide, a tutorial, support information and product information. All these sections were useful, but GRSoftware needs to implement a "How-To" section for GRBackPro to show exactly how each backup and restore process works.
GRSoftware's GRBackPro is a fair data backup program that does well backing up everything you specify, but we'd like to see GRBackPro cater more to beginners with easy-to-follow steps and instructions. Also, the interface could use a little revision to become far more impression. We still recommend it though because it's still a very capable program.
