I have backups I've created with earlier versions of BackupMyPC - specifically versions 4.85 and 5.0, when BackupMyPC was owned by Stomp. It appears that in the interim, BackupMyPC has been taken over by either Sonic, or Roxio, or both. I really don't understand the relationship between Sonic and Roxio.

It also appears that none of Roxio, Sonic, nor Stomp are supporting BackupMyPC version 5.0 any longer, and they want everyone to upgrade. I called Sonic's support line today to find out whether the latest BackupMyPC software is backward compatible with 4.85 and 5.0. The person I spoke to said a lot of things that didn't make much sense, which leads me to suspect that he didn't know what he was talking about and was making up answers as he went along. Here's one example of something he said that doesn't make sense: According to him, the latest BackupMyPC can't back up directory trees with a depth greater than 6. And he blamed this limitation on Windows XP. Yet I have files in an NTFS filesystem under XP that are sixteen levels deep in the tree, and I've never had any problem backing them up and restoring them with BUMP 5.0. I've also got comparable depths in a FAT32 filesystem under XP, and never had any problem with that either.

The critical questions for me is:

Is the latest version backwards compatible with backups created by BUMP 4.85 and BUMP 5.0? I.E. can the new version of the software restore from CDs and DVDs created with those older versions?

And that leads into the question of what the latest version is? I was told by Sonic support that Sonic's version is 6.0, and their executable is a different binary than Roxio's latest BackupMyPC, which he said is BackupMyPC 2006.

So, if Roxio and Sonic have different "latest" versions, then I need an answer to the question of whether the latest ROXIO BackupMyPC can restore from 4.85 and 5.0 backups, AND I need a separate answer to the question of whether the latest SONIC BackupMyPC can restore from 4.85 and 5.0 backups.

Anybody out there got any solid information on whether the latest BUMP can read and restore from CDs and DVDs written by earlier versions?

I don't have the 2006 version, but from what I have seen and read, it is still the 6.x version. As for the relationship between Sonic and Roxio, Sonic owns Roxio. I believe, but am not certain, the Stomp relationship was one of license to sell, not ownership of the product.
As for backward compatibility, I thought that between version 4 and 5, there were changes that made 5 not backward comaptible with 4. Not certain.
I usually do full backups so I have not run into the situation where I have old backups I need to get data from.

Marlin.

Thanks for your information, but assuming you're right that the latest is still the 6.x version, that still leaves open the question of whether BUMP 6.x is file-format compatible with 5.0 (and 4.85). I bought 4.85 a few months before they released 5.0. I chose it because it was the first PC backup program I'd encountered that was able to do incremental backups -- something Unix's 'dump' program has been doing since 1978, and that the GNU version of 'tar' has had since at least the late 1980s!

It wasn't until after I'd bought BUMP 4.85 and installed it that I discovered that they'd changed their compression algorithm, and this version wasn't able to read older backups. I think I read this in the release notes that came with 4.85. Had I known about it before I bought it, I'd have had second thoughts about buying software from a company that would break backward compatibility so readily, when they could just as easily have included the code for both the old and the new compression algorithms, and designed their file format to include version information in the header so the later version of the code could determine which compression algorithm to apply. But since I'd already bought it, and since there didn't seem to be any other PC backup utility that could do incremental backups, I kept it and I've used it for the past few years. But the fact that they broke backward compatibility once makes me wary that they'd be likely to do it again. Hence my posting here.

Also, I don't understand why doing full backups means you never have to go to old backups. The purpose of doing backups is so you have an archive of what was on your disk. I have Unix archives in tar format that I created in 1981 that I can still read with the latest version of tar on Linux or any commercial Unix! On occasion, I actually need to take a look at source code or correspondence or editorials I wrote 25 years ago. In a Unix environment, I can count on the developers to understand how critically important it is to maintain backward compatibility. Why is it so hard for developers in a PC environment to understand that the reason for backing up your data is so you can be sure you'll still be able to access your data at some arbitrary time in the distant future, on a completely different computer?

I understand where you are coming from, but when you talk about a tar file, which is a specific file type used by many applications, I can unerstand you can still read them. A backup file will change due to newer compression algorithims. I have seen this with Ghost, Retrospect, BUMP and other backup software where they are not bakward compatible. As for BUMP being the only software that can do incrementl backups, just about every backup software I have looked at will do incremental.
As for doing full backups, I do backups for disaster recovery for system recovery. If I want to save a file that I may want to use a long time in the future, I create a ZIP file. This just like the tar file type has to be backward compatible for the long term.

Marlin