Dantz Development's popular backup program, DiskFit Pro, has been in the net conversations recently, though mostly on CompuServe. It appears that DiskFit Pro has a few bugs and confusing changes from previous versions, and those bugs have convinced Dantz to send a free upgrade to 1.1 to all registered users when 1.1 is done (soon is all I can say about the timing).

The first complaints about DiskFit Pro stemmed from Dantz's decision to change the Only Applications and Only Documents selections so that items in the System Folder were not included. This comes up primarily for people who upgraded from the previous version but did not create a new SmartSet, because they will expect their documents and applications in the System Folder to be backed up. The design implementation is not so much in question as Dantz's failure to clearly document the change as a change. The manual and the program say that Only Documents will exclude documents in the System Folder. They do not, however, say that applications in the System Folder will be excluded if Only Applications is checked. Larry Zulch of Dantz has acknowledged the problem on CIS, and said that they were looking into providing the same functionality in a manner that would allow the user to more precisely select what will and will not be backed up.

More serious from the bug standpoint is a pesky varmint that will on occasion make the Exact Duplicates function, which preserves a volume's special identification data to retain privilege information, work like Less Copying, which only copies files if the file size has changed. The workaround is to avoid using Exact Duplicates, which would entail fixing some privileges in the event of a restore, but would not lose any data. Needless to say, this is a bug that could result in some data not being backed up. Dantz takes their responsibility as a provider of what is in essence security software seriously, and this bug compromises DiskFit Pro 1.0's efficacy. Hence the free upgrade that will arrive at your door soon if you're registered. We're pleased to see this sort of public response because it instills confidence in a company, and if a company making backup software needs anything, it's consumer confidence. No one's perfect, but the best we can all do when we make mistakes is try and fix them quickly and accurately.

Information from:
Larry Zulch, Dantz Development -- 72477.1322@compuserve.com
Bill Weylock -- 76012.3026@compuserve.com