Dare to be Creative announces Parachute backup utility for Mac OS X

If there's one thing you've probably learned over the years from reading TUAW, it's that backups are important. Many of the bloggers here are obsessive about backups, doing Time Machine backups, SuperDuper! bootable backups, and using services like BackBlaze for offsite backups -- and that's all for one Mac!

With the importance of viable and easy-to-create backups for your Mac, it's not surprising that Belgium development firm Dare to be Creative has just announced a new backup utility, Parachute [US$39.00]. The application is Snow Leopard-ready, and can be used to back up your Mac's data to your primary hard disk (definitely not recommended by our team), external disks, FTP or SFTP servers, USB drives, network volumes, and even your iDisk.

Parachute has many features that are found on other backup utilities. For example, you can schedule backups to run hourly, daily, weekly, or manually. The application also does incremental backups after the initial full backup, so subsequent backups take much less time. There is one feature that does appear to be unique to Parachute, and that's the ability to create multiple backup tasks for different files and folders on your Mac, and use a variety of destinations for each task.

There's a 15-day full-functioning trial available for download here. While you are in your tryptophan-induced coma after tomorrow's Thanksgiving Day feast, you can set up some Parachute backups and rest assured that your data is safe.

View Tags

Source: http://creativebe.com/parachute/

Categories

Software First Look

If there's one thing you've probably learned over the years from reading TUAW, it's that backups are important. Many of the bloggers here...

Add a Comment

Sign in »

13 Comments

Filter by:

I followed your recommendation.... I bought the app....
and I suffer ever since!
Parachute Backup doesn't work!
NON of the scheduled tasks take ever place correctly!
The tasks start always as due but the app quites each time "unexpectedly".
In the beginning I sent Feedbacks of the crash to Creative, with details of what I was trying to do when the crash occurred (trying to backup, what else?)
Than I sent a mail tu their "support" service. Two weeks have passed, I'm still waiting to an answer.
I'm still backing up manually.....

I'll let you know if there was any evolution......

January 24 2010 at 7:10 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

zendiz

They are Austrian firm not Belgian. As far i could notice on their website

November 25 2009 at 9:36 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Shunnabunich

Ghk...that...is not how you do...reflections! o_O

November 25 2009 at 8:04 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ashley Grayson

Clicking on the Parachute website links for more information opens pages for their other App iArchiver. I can't tell if it is a web error or if Parachute includes iArchiver.

November 25 2009 at 7:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

cpabster

Problem with iDisk is storage space. And their storage prices are absurd to begin with.

November 25 2009 at 5:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

robogobo

Is that a 1 megaton bomb on the end of that parachute?

November 25 2009 at 2:01 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Joe

I hope this works well with iDisk.

Ive tried other backups that supposedly work with idisk, but none seem to cut it.

November 25 2009 at 12:50 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

oshawapilot

Ugh, why didn't this come along a few weeks ago before I purchased Twin (www.app4mac.com) which has turned out to be broken beyond belief for offsite FTP backups. To add insult to injury I paid nearly $80 for Twin.

They promise that a new version arriving Dec 1'st should fix the issues I'm having, but I certainly would have gave Parachute a shot for half the price, that's for sure. Perhaps it would have actually worked out of the gate, as well.

November 25 2009 at 12:27 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

mindctrl

Looks like decent software, except that I've attempted several test backups, using WebDAV, and it hangs on "Cleaning up". I did a simple test using only one folder with 1 test file in it. Clicking the stop button does nothing too. So it hangs, forcing me to close the app.

It seems to work ok with SFTP. So at least that's good.

November 25 2009 at 12:12 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

austin

why again is time machine not good enough? (sry for n00b question)

November 25 2009 at 11:50 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to austin's comment

kiel.holliday

Time Machine is directly connected to the backup machine. You want to have multiples and off-site backup.

November 25 2009 at 12:14 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply