A lot of people have been asking where I’ve been the past several months: why the blog has been void of updates, why EasyBCD 2.0 is taking so long, why the image gallery still hasn’t been properly updated, and so on and so forth. With university was over and done with, I was supposed to have more time on my hands to dedicate to NeoSmart Technologies. If I had to point the finger of blame, it would rest squarely on Genie Timeline 2.0.
For the past year, Genie-Soft (my current employer) has been working on a revolutionary new — and free — backup program. Anyone that has ever searched for a professional backup solution has probably experienced firsthand just how difficult it can be to find something fast, powerful, and easy to use… and forget about being free, too.
Timeline 2 pushes the idea of “constant data protection” with real-time monitoring of changes to your data and intelligently scheduled backups of your files. You don’t schedule backups, they just happen in response to the modifications you make. You just run Timeline in the background, and you’re instantly protected. Files are versioned, clustered, and indexed then intelligently purged as needed to save space.
In geek terms, Timeline most-closely resembles a hybrid between version control systems and backup software. Like any good version control system, GTL keeps versions of all your old files, uses block-level differential backup for larger files such as PSTs, and tracks changes on the individual file level. But the entire process is automated and the all the capabilities and features are hidden behind an ostensibly simple GUI, with a web interface that lets you search all backed up data instantly.
Of course, this isn’t an unbiased recommendation: I’ve been part of the Timeline development team from and am responsible for some of the lower-level components. Over the past year, I’ve learned a lot designing and implementing some really incredible features in Timeline. Don’t let the simple interface fool you, there’s a lot of technology and sheer power under the hood… and this is what’s been keeping me busy.
Timeline 2.0 is available 100% for free, making it a must-have for any Windows users out there looking to protect their data. With the price of external disks at an all-time low and the value of digital data skyrocketing upwards, there’s no excuse to not have backups of your software. Especially now that it won’t even cost you a dime.
Download Genie Timeline 2.0 Free
Everyone at Genie-Soft has worked endlessly to make the Timeline experience as smooth and delightfully easy as possible. Of course, no software is perfect and while Genie Timeline may look deceivingly simple, it is incredibly complex under the hood. Please let us know what you think and share how your Timeline experience goes.
I have free licenses of Genie Timeline Pro to give away to feedback and comments on the software – but you need to install it and comment below to qualify. If you liked or didn’t like Timeline, share your notes here, tell us what you’d do with your copy of Pro, and get a free upgrade. Free licenses also available for incoming links. Genie Timeline Pro adds Disaster Recovery, advanced filters, encryption, purging, and advanced restore to an already powerful product.
Update (4/12/10):
The initial wave of free licenses is over. I still have several more licenses to give, but no guarantees…
This looks awesome!
Looks great for me, and it also looks like something I could recommend to non-tech family members 🙂
However, I have to send my laptop to Acer for repair 🙁 I’d really appreciate a Genie Timeline Pro license to play with when I get it back.. 🙂
Just tried it out and it did a good deal of job for me, i used to use Paragon Drive backup, but this is fast and effective.
It’s an advanced program with a simple and intuitive user interface.
I just wanted to backup my e-mail, so I only chose Email in the smart selection.
It’s a pitty it also backups my rss feed (all 8000+ items), is there any way to specify which ‘Email’ items I want to include/exclude.
EasyBCD impressed me, and finally allowed me to dual-boot successfully. so when I saw this backup software, from your RSS feed, had to try it.
Excellent work. Beats the included Win7 backup and Paragon. Easy to use. easy to understand.
You did a great job (along with your employer) on this. You have a right to be proud.
I learned the hard way when i lost some important data due to my pc crashing. Had to reinstall the OS and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. I’ve used other similar backup programs but didn’t really like them due to my pc slowing down & tedious manual settings. I was looking for a better backup solution and decided to try Genie Timeline 2.0.
Installation was a easy and i let it install at default settings. Now i just sit back and let the program continuously monitor & backup my data every half hourly. The protection status indicator assures me that all my important files are safely backed up 100%. The program has a very user friendly interface with clear details and is fully customizable to suit my needs.
I would be happy to win a license for Genie Timeline Pro for the added capabilities like filters and security features.
Just downloaded it and it works great! Would love to get one of those Product keys! 😉
I have tried this program, and really liked how easy it was to use! I would like a license if you would be so kind!
Nice piece of software that doesn’t ask much from the harddisk and given’t anny delay in working.
The possibility to search back in time is deffinitly handy for people in the world of computer science for finding back older files etc.
(a license is always nice 😀 )
link to reason backup disk could not be used resulted in “page not found”. Couple of 100G + partitions were availible and formated. Win7-64 U
It is hard to believe that Genie Timeline 2.0 is a free product. First, I can see that a lot of time and effort was put into making Timeline 2.0 easy to use and implement. Yet, it is still highly configurable for both novice and power users. Timeline 2.0 is fast, easy on system resources, low impact on other running applications, secure, has many advanced options yet doesn’t leave the novice user scratching their heads and stingy on disk space usage. This is a pretty impressive product. It really is a Time Machine because it keeps track of all of the changes, not once per hour, but when they are made. There is even the option to backup changes according to a schedule.
Let’s compare this to most of the other free backup products are out there now. Most of the free products are syncing applications–at best. These syncing applications run at specified times, don’t make good use of disc space because they don’t compress the data and certainly don’t look for block level changes to save space. In addition, syncing applications don’t do versioning at all.
Most of the other free backup products are disk imaging applications. Disk imagers run, typically, once a day or less and don’t do file versioning, as well as having other drawbacks. Timeline 2.0 free has none of these obvious drawbacks or deficiencies. Timeline 2.0 is apparently in the forefront of these other backup products types.
Are there some drawbacks? There may be. As far as I can tell, Genie Timeline 2.0 does not backup changes in VSS copies. (I may get corrected on this.) If this is true, then data or files currently in use may not get backed up (until the file is closed).
It certainly appears to be a must download. And, I definitely want to be included in the contest for a free product upgrade license but will be very happy with Genie Timeline 2.0 should I not win.
Hi! I’m a newbie and I was able to install it easily.It seems to be running fine.
It’s so nice to have a program install and work as it is claimed to do.
Thanks you for providing this opportunity.I look forward to the product key also!
I just installed the demo of Pro Timeline on my PC with Windows 7 x64, wonderful, good in Spanish. This deserves Oooooooooole! First, it gives me the option to save the previous settings and update Genie Timeline 2. After only 3 minutes to show up the home screen with market data make it optional. I tried to restore previously saved pdf files on the desktop and works perfectly, very suitable for those who have the habit of “forgetting” files around the desktop. It is also very useful aid in choosing the appropriate disc for better backup.
What would I do with my copy of Genie Pro timeline? Well save my hundreds of videos and pictures in an orderly, professional and above all very intelligent. Congratulations for this program.
Thanks in advance for all
Jesus
Hello everyone,
Thanks for all your comments and mini reviews – your feedback is very much appreciated! I’m glad we could make Genie Timeline available free of charge, because there really is a need for a decent and free backup program.
Wouter: We back up the Outlook .PST file, so the best thing to do is use a separate PST for the RSS and not include it in the backup.
Gene: The algorithm for Recommended Drives is a little complicated, but local partition won’t be “recommended” though if they have enough free space you may go ahead and use them anyway. Thanks for catching the broken “more info” link – I’ve conveyed your bug to the team and they’re fixing it now.
wjbinokc: Thanks for your review! GTL2 uses VSS for open PSTs and for full-system Disaster Recovery.
Everyone else: thank you so much for your kind words!!
I’ll be sending out the first batch of Pro licenses today to qualifying posters! Check your email, and thanks again!
Wow, What a simple and easy to use, no fuss program. From when I first installed it and till I got it running and backing up what I want. Nothing but simple and no hassles.
This is the sort of program I would recommend to basic home users for its so easy to use. No hassles. Just select your back up drive select the folders and files you would liked backed up and thats it.
I will recommend this program to a few clients of mine, as they do not like going through the hassles of backing up as they don’t want to wait at the end of the day for it to finish. Now they wont have to as this backs up hourly to the selected drive, a win for them not loosing their data between my weekly call outs.
I for one never really bothered with back up programs as much because they were a hassle to use and really didn’t want to spend hours configuring it. Now I don’t really have to, I set it and now I forget it and it backs up every hour.
I cant wait to give the pro version a go with the other added features
Thank you for an awesome application
Hi Mahmoud,
Was looking for a tool like GTL for years, sounds really promising from the description on Genie website.
So I was really looking forward to start using it. Unfortunately I was unable to install it properly on my Windows box! I’m afraid this is due to its 64-bit nature…
Indeed, I’m running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. At the end of the installation, I had an error telling that the app. failed to start due to a side-by-side configuration issue.
Anyway, the installer went to its end. However, if I then attempt to start GTL, I get this very same error.
Looking at the event log, I have several events generated by the SideBySide source telling:
Following suggested action in this message, I ran sxstrace, restarted GTL, and here is the output:
Any clue? Hope you’ll be able to fix it shortly, I would like very much to test GTL!
HTH
Forgot to mention that the above comment applies to the Free version.
Anyway, I just uninstall it, then installed the Pro version, and got the same error.
Additionally, though far less critical, the fact that the installer restarts Explorer.Exe (to avoid requesting a reboot I guess) is quite annoying, as this messes up the icons on the taskbar: reorder them, some icons are not restored (replaced by some generic ones), open instances not on top of pinned button.
Hi TerDale,
It seems that the redistributable pack is failing to install. Please run vcredist.msi from C:\Program Files\Genie-Soft\Genie Timeline\redist64 — that should resolve the problem, or at least display the error being encountered. The current setup doesn’t check if the redistributable installed correctly; we will be upload a new build that will perform the check very soon.
As for the explorer.exe issue – we are looking into several solutions that don’t require restarting explorer. Technically, all the issues you explain (other than the closing of open Explorer windows and the reordering of taskbar items) are results of bugs in the other applications themselves and shouldn’t happen. But we obviously understand how annoying it can be and will do our best to address it.
Hope this works out so you too can join in the Timeline experience!
Mahmoud,
Sorry for the noise (you can probably delete above needless noisy comments if you think it appropriate): I just understood my issue, and it is actually not at all related to the 64-bit platform:
– the problem is related to the fact that I tweaked my Windows installation to move “Program Files” (PF) & “Program Files (x86)” (PFx86) on another disk,
– for compatibility issues, I created junctions on C:
– it turns out that this is the key point
– indeed, after modifying the registry to indicate that PF & PFx86 were actually on my E: drive, then GTL installation did succeed, and GTL was properly launched.
So, I think GTL installer is not directly involved, but instead that there is some issue with .NET SxS handling with junctions. BTW, I had also some (different) issues with 2 recent Windows Update patches that refused to properly installed until I changed the registry to point PF to the actual drive instead of the junction
HTH, and sorry again
I’m now starting to use GTL, I’ll post comments on it later on.
Just downloaded the free version and completed my first backup. All I can say is WOW! How easy was that?
My only gripe was that I wasn’t able to use the External SATA Drive that I connected as it was discovered as a local drive and would allow me to select it as the backup drive, but as I have an alternative external IDE laptop drive in an IctBox I was able to use that.
Configuring the application as to what I wanted backing up was a breeze and though I have yet to try a restore I did have a quick look at it and it seems very simple and intuative. I am assuming that the slider at the top allows you to determine haw far back in the backup, and thus which version of the file, to restore.
Far easier than anything I have ever used in all my time using computers.
I cannot recommend this product enough, and will be mentioning it on all the various networking sites I use, and suggesting it to freinds and collegues.
Well done, you should be proud.
Oh, and I just noticed the search facility! stunning stuff.
Tony: Thanks for your feedback! The slider does indeed move you back through time; as soon as you have enough versions, new ticks will appear letting you flick between them and view your PC in the past.
eSata is currently not detected as a recommended drive in this build, 2.0.1 (due for release in the next 2 weeks) should address this issue. However, you may choose to select it from the list of non-recommended drives and use it anyway – you don’t have to use the IDE.
I HAVE INSTALLED GENIE TIMELINE 2 PRO TO TRY IT IN MY WINDOWS 7 64 BIT MACHINE AND IAM AMAZED ITS BEUTIFUL AND SIMPLE AS TIME MACHINE OF MAC OS IAM VERY HAPPY TO TELL YOU THA I TURN BACK MY HACKINDOSH TO WINDOWS 7 ULTIMATE BECOUSE OF GENIE TIMELINE THANKS ALOT I RETURNED FROM THE DEAD
i dare ask how this is different from apple’s time machine?
After working with this software some more, I uninstalled my purchased copy of Paragon Backup. This software is really easy to use, enough to make backing up fun if I dare say so.
The window is easy to understand, and set the preferences as you need or want them, and the sliding timeline is great.
After this, I would love to work with the PRO version.
As I have a SOHO network, is there any chance you’ll be doing a network version with PRO features?
Dave
Hello again, David.
Glad to hear you’re enjoying the software. What exactly do you mean by “network version?” – what features does that entail?
Note to all:
Having issues with the licensing systems. Most likely will be resolved on Sunday. Thanks for your patience 🙂
Wow! I installed the free version 2.0 and love it! Had no trouble installing it on a Windows XP – SP3 machine.
So far no problems using it. Nice interface, very user friendly, working as advertised. Wonderful work! I’m backing up to an external drive. No problems.
I’m looking for a bug to report, but so far it is working so well I can’t find any!
Hope this will not disqualify me for the free Pro license because I would love to receive one. I run a small non-profit organization and would like to use the Pro version on my PC. Several users use the machine, and we keep a lot of important documents on it. The security features of Pro would be valuable because much of it is confidential information about clients and we want to keep backups secure. The compression features would be helpful too as well as some of the other features of Pro. This is the perfect product for this application.
Thanks again for this! I’ll send additional feedback to Genie as I have a chance to use Timeline for a longer period.
First impression is WOW!
Ryan
I have been using Genie Backup Manager Pro for 3 or 4 years now, and have been quite happy with it.The only problem is, that everytime you make a change to files you have backed up, you have to do a manual backup, which gets cummbersome after a while. So, I decided to try Genie Timeline Pro 2.0, and I LOVE it. I have it set to backup every 1 hour, and it does it in the background so well, that I don’t even know when it’s doing it’s job. This is an EXCELLENT piece of software, but it is a bit expensive for me to buy.
I’ve installed this on my Win 7 Pro x64 machine. I have sampled backups with both the category style and folder methods. The category method seemed to work much faster (probably because I left of the ISO selection!). I especially like the Genie Timeline. It’s nice have the version control in the backup.
Thanks
Ran into this when I was looking for a Windows 7 program to do what Apple’s Time Capsule does. Really like the dashboard and configuration options. Turbo Mode is a nice option. In my opinion better than Time Capsule.
Have been looking at Acronis backup, but Timeline seems to do everything I need and is Free! Very easy to use, simple user interface, and reassuring dialogs.
I also support a local nursary who have lost files on a few occasions, and will reccomend this product to them. The versioning facility is particularly useful – I ‘ve lost count of the number of times a modified document has been saved over the top of the original by accident!
If I qualified for a Pro licnce, I’d use it on my home PC, or possibly pass it onto the nursery for them to use.
Congrats to all in volved in this product.
Martin Robson.
Hi
Backup has always been one of those painful chores – has to be done but on the whole, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.
I recently bought a Mac and have been very impresses with Time Machine – set up and forget. I have been searching for an equivalent on Windows, All roads seemed to lead to Genie-Soft, but I did not think it was quite ready yet. The new version smokes and brings the Mac qualities to Windows. Thanks, Genie-soft, great job and great foresight in creating a free version.
Regards
I assume the help file is actually for the Pro version? I tried to tweak the selection settings and the help refers to an Edit button (on the smart selection) and a show hidden files option (on the My Computer selection), neither of which I can see. What the help didn’t make clear (to me at least) is that the smart selection and the folder selection are additive: it’s file types *plus* selected folders, rather than either/or.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I have a slightly complicated home network, where I mostly work on a laptop, but keep my files on the ‘D’ drive of a desktop. My wife mostly uses that desktop, but keeps her files on ‘C’. Meanwhile the kids mostly use a second games-oriented desktop, to which I have attached an external hard drive which I want to use for backups. Just to confuse things, I use Lotus WordPro and 123 for some of my documents. I have tried a number of backup programs (free and not-too-expensive), and found some which more or less cover my needs in a patchwork fashion. I’ve now installed Timeline 2.0 on the main PC where the data is held, and, so far, it is looking hopeful that it will replace the lot.
The setup wizard is great. I have a mapped network drive pointing to the external hard drive, and it picked it up straight away as the recommended destination. I thought I had a problem with the selection screen, but the program supports my old Lotus files so I’m fine. I do think the selection by data type, as opposed to folder, is a good idea. Even better is that I can backup by file type and then add folders to be backed up as well. After these two steps I get a chance to look at what I have chosen then I just click Finish and it’s done.
One thing I notice is that ‘Financial Files’ doesn’t include Taxcalc files (cf http://taxcalc.com/) – these are .Syy, where yy is the year number. Not a big deal for me as I’ve just added that folder to be backed up in full.
The initial backup job itself ran smoothly (it took a while, but there’s a lot to look through), and the subsequent incremental backups seem to be running well also. I like the fact that there is a notification, when I put the mouse over the tray icon, which tells me that files have been changed but not yet backed up. I haven’t checked yet to see what happens if the backup destination is unavailable, but logically I assume that this ‘Protection Level’ value just keeps going down until the backup can run again.
All in all, this looks to me like an excellent product. Congratulations for your part in creating it.
I stupidly partitioned and formatted my main hard drive without backing up some of my most important files, hopefully this program will help me not to lose my files again 🙂
This is pretty awesome, especially for free. I did have one question that I can’t seem to find in the online or application help sections.. the comparison chart says that the free version does not support automatic purging of old-version backup data when your backup drive starts to get full. Are you able to manually purge backup data? If so, it’s not an option that I can seem to find. If not, are you pretty much SOL when your hard drive reaches capacity?
Thank you!
Hello there,
I’ve been trying Genie Timeline Pro 2 for a little bit and I must admit I’m quite impressed. I tried the previous version of Genie Timeline and it was buggy and slow, had to uninstall it quickly, but version 2 looks a lot better.
I haven’t thoroughly tried it yet but an initial suggestion would be that it was sort of difficult for me to figure out how to select the files “I” wanted to backup. The software has a nice screen with automatic selection of most common files, but I tend to distrust any ‘automatic’ file selection like images, videos and so on because I’m always afraid they’ll leave something important out to back up. Therefore I’m more inclined to do an explicit selection of the folders I want backed up, and in this case it took me longer than it should to figure it out. While I understand making it easy for people to backup stuff, being to select explicitly your files and folders is essential in a backup software.
I’ll comment more here as I go along with Genie Timeline 2 and of course it would be wonderful to get a free license for the product and upgrade my trial to the full product 🙂 Thanks in advance if that happens
By the way, forgot to mention that if you were good enough to give me a free Pro version, I would be spending some time working on a more customised schedule for my backups.
Thanks in advance.
Regards
I have had Genie Manager 8.0 and it works well. The Timeline 2.0 Pro tells me I’m all kinds of percentages backed up–sometimes 1%, others 20%, etc. It has been running about 2 hours total.
I have also had trouble getting the Genie Support or home page on the website to come up. It just never comes up. It seems to have affected my internet explorer. I have somewhat resolved that issue. Would appreciate some tech support on this.
I love the concept, just need some help.
Would be glad to hang in there, comment, resolve issues, and recommend to friends, etc. for a free license.
Thanks,
Eugen Bach
Hello,
Works well so far. I want to see how this does against ShadowProtect, which is limited.
Should I be expecting the free Genie Timeline Pro license in my e-mail?
I have not seen it yet.
Thank you.
I have been an Acronis TrueImage user for years but have lately become disenchanted with the product due to bugs.
I would love to replace it on several machines with Genie Timeline Pro as the product seems to work really well.
I am also consult with a lot of companies and have recommended Acronis in the past but would be willing to recommend Genie with some additional testing.
I am interested in getting a license for the Pro version to finish the testing process.
Thanks!
I’ve been using Genie for the past week and I like the versioning control it’s giving and the overall simplicity. Working great!
Just like everyone else, wondering about the status of the licensing.
Thanks
One thing that has frustrated me about the free version is the number of things I’d like to try that tells me I need to upgrade?such as creating an image or disaster recovery. These are things I’d really like to do with the Pro version. I guess I’ll download the trial for that and see how it compares.
It took about twelve hours to do the initial backup of 107 GB (without compression). No problems at all, and even did not interfere with other activities using the Turbo mode.
I tested the disaster recovery and it took three hours. No problems at all. Just a little slow.
I might be doing it wrong, but what I mean about networking is this:
Is there anyway to backup drives on other computers while running the program on my machine? Or does it have to be installed on each machine.
I’ve got five PCs running Vista or better, and I can backup the shared folders but is there a way to backup the drive even if it isn’t totally shared?
Genie Timeline is a fantastic backup tool – thanks. I have tried many other backup programs and have found that Genie Timeline is the best to date and the free version has a package of features that are not found on any other. Timeline 2 has simply worked in the background and saved all the folders and files I selected and all my file changes have been successfully backed up and can be so easily restored from the brilliant Timeline explorer.
I backup my home network server onto the harddrives of several network computers but many backup programs will not do this and will not even work over a network. I have been using Genie Backup Manager Pro for my network backups but Genie Timeline is simpler and is so easy to setup. The only thing missing from the free version for me is backup security so I need the Pro version – please may I have one of your free licenses.
The only improvement I would like to see with Genie Timeline is the option to setup more than one backup job so backups can be stored at multiple locations.
Hello everyone,
Thanks for all your feedback and wonderful comments. I’m glad that Timeline has lived up to our expectations with all the great responses we’ve been hearing from you all 🙂
I’ve sent out the licenses to qualifying comment authors above (using the email address specified in the comment form). I apologize for the delay, we’ve been really busy at Genie-Soft these past two weeks!
Remember to spread the word about Timeline. The dawn of free backup that doesn’t suck is finally here!
Received the license. Thank you very much!
I’ve been recommending Genie Backup Manager to people for years. I think it’s the best backup program on the market.
Now the new Timeline provides another great product. I’ll be glad to help spread the word and also provide more feedback after I’ve used it for a while.
Thanks again!
Ever since I’m working on a Mac at work I’ve been looking for Time Machine like backup software for my Windows PC at home.
I first used Acronis True Image Home to schedule my backups but this was very cumbersome. Not only was the design of a secure schedule hard, backups take ages and especially the validation (which seemed necessary as it is presented as an option) is costly. What bugged me the most was the fact that when a backup was interrupted by shutting down the PC, the backup became corrupted. Also, purging of older backups is buggy and takes forever.
Then, Genie Timeline 2.0 came along, it is everything I’m looking for. Installation and configuration was a breeze, only the initial backup of about 100Gb took about 48 hours. After that minor bump in the road, Genie Timeline 2.0 works like a charm and doesn’t affect the performance of my system. The GUI is very slick and browsing the backup itself is a smooth experience. It is a real comfort knowing that it takes care of my precious data at all times! I’m planning to install the software at my family’s PC as well.
Finally I would like to compliment the support desk of Genie Soft. Even on a Sunday morning they quickly replied to my questions 🙂
Testing it out on both my wife’s and my own computer. Tried to use it on my work computer but the bit where you select folders from your computer is oddly missing, as in there is no ‘my computer’ tab at all. Tried the free version and both trial versions. Yes it was installed with an admin account.
Been looking for something like this ever since I set up my in-laws mac computer and grew jealous over their time machine. The simplicity of this program puts my multiple, daily backup scripts to shame.
I’d love a free licence as it is my birthday 🙂