The Dangers of Using a Rollback Program

We’ve recently had a customer come in for a problem that we haven’t seen before – while his backup program was running, the power got cut off on his computer. This in turn corrupted his Windows system files and he couldn’t boot up any longer.

Curious about this program and how a backup could do this type of damage, we did a little more research and discovered that he was using Rollback RX. Rollback RX creates “snapshots” of your computer as it’s backup method so if ever something gets messed up, you can go back in time to that exact moment. Sounds good so far, so where’s the drawback?

The computer wouldn’t boot up any longer because Rollback RX was doing something extra with the system files. The power was then cut off at the absolute worst possible time and those files were no longer usable. We were able to get it repaired and the customer wanted Rollback RX uninstalled as not only did it cause his computer to cease functioning but it also increased boot time.

Here is where it got bad: upon uninstalling Rollback RX, an option was supposed to come up asking which snapshot we wanted to fall back to (or just to stay at the current time). Unbeknownst to us that this option was supposed to come up during the uninstall process (which it never did), we completely removed Rollback RX using the Windows Programs and Features tool. When doing this, it took us all the way back to when the customer first installed the program, over a year ago! Every single file that was created after that was gone.

It was only after researching into why this was and reading what was supposed to happen that we learned about the omitted option. Worse yet, there is very little support about how to get your files back other than a small chance with their support team’s assistance.

While this program would be great for some who would like a quick way to revert their computer back to a certain time, the risk that you’re taking using it as your only backup is too great. We would recommend other forms of non-intrusive backups such as EaseUS or cloud-based file uploading (Carbonite).