I tested GoBack and found that while it holds great promise, it shouldn't be on anyone's desktop until it's more reliable.

Easy Installation
GoBack's installation was very easy. The only options concern how much disk space to dedicate to the rollback data and how to handle multiple drives.

The installation reboots your machine several times because the program runs at a very low level in the system. The GoBack program must make sure GoBack will run at startup, create the GoBack rollback files and start GoBack as a system task.

GoBack will not run on machines that can boot multiple operating systems--therefore, if you're using System Commander, Partition Magic or similar boot menus you'll have to decide if rollback and multiple operating systems are more important. It also won't work with Windows NT and with systems using disk compression.

GoBack has three parts. The GoBack system monitors the changes to the disk drive(s), and saves the changes in a database. The GoBack console lets you recover lost files, examine the system state and trigger a system rollback to an earlier state. The pop-up menu that is displayed early in the boot cycle lets you recover your system when it's too messed up to boot normally. These components work well together.

Problems at the Start
The initial installation on the first machine I used didn't work. Instead of a boot, I saw a strange checkerboard pattern. Trying again, I installed the patch sent to me by the responsive WildFile helpdesk, but GoBack still did not work. The helpdesk informed me that the beta has problems with computers with lots of system devices--the technicians I spoke with pointed to my CD-ROM writer as the probable culprit. The next beta version is supposed to take care of this problem.

Next, I uninstalled GoBack. This process went cleanly and without data loss. I then installed it on another, simpler machine, and it worked. I copied a number of files to my PC, waited a few minutes, and deleted the files. To make life a bit harder for GoBack, I then emptied the wastebasket. I started the GoBack console, and it found and restored the files.

I also created a virtual image of the hard disk as it had been at a "system safe point"--the last time all the files were closed. The virtual disk was given a drive letter and looked just like another drive to the Windows Explorer. I was able to recover entire directories that I had deleted by dragging them from the virtual disk to the real disk.

Time Traveling
Feeling bolder now, I wiped my Program Files folder, and then wiped all the files that I could from the Windows and Windows\system directories. The PC would not boot at that point. At the next reboot, I pressed the space bar and entered the GoBack boot-up menu. It offered to revert the hard disk to an earlier time, and let me choose any of the system safe points it had stored. I picked one that predated the mass deletion. This is what WildFile refers to as time travel. GoBack used its database to re-create the missing files and directories and then rebooted my PC. I was mumbling "time travel works" as the PC came back up.

Next, I installed Microsoft Office 97, a huge application, on my computer. Once it was up and working, I did another disk reversion--back to the time before the application was installed. With a quick reboot, Microsoft Office 97 was completely gone. GoBack continues to track files during a reversion. This means you can recover files you created after the time to which you have reverted. All this is well and good, but the amazing part is that it's easy to use.

How far back in time you can travel depends on how much disk activity you have, and how much disk space is reserved for the GoBack data. By default, GoBack uses 10 percent of your disk space for the data, which WildFile claims is approximately a week's worth of data for most people.

If that's not a sufficiently large window, you'll encounter another limitation of GoBack. The only way to change the size of the data area is to uninstall GoBack, then reinstall it, specifying a larger storage area. When you do this, however, you'll lose your existing GoBack data.

Real-World Tests
At this point, I was so pleased with GoBack I decided to install it on my personal Compaq laptop, which I used as my regular PC for more than a day after the GoBack installation. When I tried to use the laptop at home to catch up on some work, I was greeted with an error message from the GoBack Engine. Each time I rebooted the PC, I got the same error after three to five minutes, and then the PC locked up. When I tried to disable GoBack, I still got the same error, so I couldn't disable or uninstall the product.

Of course, there were files on this computer that I needed to copy for a client, and it was a Saturday, so WildFile's Monday through Friday helpdesk was not available. In the end, I worked fast and copied the needed files from the hard disk before it locked up in that three to five minute time frame between reboots.

Things got better when Monday rolled around. The WildFile helpdesk assisted me as I disabled and uninstalled GoBack. They commented that the GoBack Engine error I had encountered was most likely due to disk corruption. However, I had run a thorough scan disk on my laptop before the installation and it had come up clean. After uninstalling GoBack, I ran a scan disk again, and it still found no problems. WildFile's helpdesk told me that the next beta won't have the GoBack Engine errors.

When GoBack worked it was amazing. It solved problems for me cleanly and easily. Nevertheless, it had trouble working on two of the three PCs I used. Given that GoBack has to work below the operating system, which is a very difficult thing to do, the problems I experienced aren't entirely unexpected. And I didn't lose any data, which suggests the software's design is fundamentally sound. Finally, WildFire's technical support was excellent.

But in the final analysis, I can't recommend the version of GoBack I tested, especially for its target audience--end users.

Mike Avery is the founder of Golden Triangle Network Consultants, which specializes in network design, management and administration. Send your comments on this article to him at mavery@mail.otherwhen.com.