Spare Backup (http://www.sparebackup.com) has been in the news lately, and I’m sure the investors are happy.  Several deals have been signed, most recently to bundled into some Geek Squad service offerings in the UK.  This is good.  It means more people will have access to backups and will likely make the choice to take advantage of backups.

There is one thing about Spare Backup that makes me nervous…they are evangelists of the “set it and forget it” model.  As I’ve said a number of times (click here to see the proof), deliberate backups are the best backups.  It is best to understand your data, choose the right files for backup, and test that backup, by periodically restoring files (and not the same files every time, test different file restores, from different folders, etc.).  Spare Backup leans heavily on the concept that their software can intelligently select the files that you need.  So, hopefully this works for you.  Does anyone have some experience with restoring files from their “presets” or installing programs to alternate volumes or non-standard paths?