Product Reviews

Rewind's debut was impressive and there has been no letup in the pace of amendments to Power On Software's groundbreaking file recovery program. This, the third update since the program's release, offers more small but important improvements.

Despite some stark aesthetic changes to the program's main window, which have led to incorrect assumptions that the program was Mac OS X native, most of the program's improvements aren't immediately obvious. Rewind's main function is still to track every file change made on your Mac and allow you to return specific documents or volumes to a previous state. The program also keeps the simple tabbed palette that holds lists of modified files and a calendar enabling you to negotiate previous saved states.

ADVERTISEMENT

What has changed is that the invisible backup file that stores the details of your activities is now more effectively limited in size. Despite the ability to set a specific archive size in previous versions, this could bloat unnecessarily if Rewind was backing up several weeks' worth of work.

Alongside improved stability, Rewind recognises Virtual PC 4 disk images. This doesn't mean Rewind can perform backtracking magic on PC files - rather it can ignore such disk images for more extensive cataloguing on the Mac side.

Rewind can now also restore files even if a version of the document was open during a previous Rewind operation. Power On claims the program will remove a backup file correctly if its protection is turned off, although we found problems in this area were rare.

Protect and serve

Usefully, Rewind's emergency startup disk, which allows you to boot up when your normal system isn't functioning correctly simply by pressing the r key, now supports Mac OS 9.1.

The changes to Rewind aren't groundbreaking, but there was little room for performance improvement anyway. While the program still can't be recommended as sole protection against mishap, its real beauty is that you can forget about it until you need it. This is a compelling selling point for those guilty of lapses in backup strategy.