More than just the feeling of having experienced something before, although in fact it is the first time that it has been experienced, Déjà Vu is also a clever little backup utility. Despite all doing the exact same thing, backup programs have very different approaches to how they accomplish their task, and this one is no different.

Installing
After downloading and installing the Déjà Vu disk image, I was quite unpleasantly surprised to see a couple of folders, some text documents and what looked like a script that had the 'Install Déjà Vu' name. It looked like something slapped together by a couple of script kitties in somebody's basement. Despite the initial impression, once I opened the install file, everything else that followed was very in tune with the natural OS X installation process.

Preference Pane
Unlike other backup utilities that go the way of standalone applications, Déjà Vu takes the path of the Preference pane. This approach works quite well because of the ease of use when performing basic backups. All the options and settings you need are located inside the main window, making this feel like the backup preference pane Apple never made.

Backup by any other name
One of the things that struck me about this program is the way basic backups are handled. The main window contains a list of backup tasks, one on each row, with three columns labeled 'When,' 'What' and 'Where'. This plain English approach is very straightforward and self explanatory, even to someone who has never done a backup before. The 'When' dropdown menu lets you select either a scheduled daily, weekly or monthly backup, or a manual one; the 'What' lets you select the file or folder you want to backup; and the 'Where' is the location where the backup copy will be stored. An additional fourth column lets you turn each backup item on or off.

At the top of the screen, three big buttons indicate the time and success of the most recent daily, weekly and monthly backups. The buttons, when pressed open up logs to the respective backup, in which you can see every step that took place. Additionally, next to each, you can see a little status indicator, which informs you whether there were errors or not.

Advanced options
Déjà Vu has several advanced options that can be set according to your preference.

Mirror makes the 'Where' folder an exact copy of the 'What' folder, effectively mirroring them. This means that files that are present in the 'Where' folder, and not present in the 'What' folder will be erased. Those who are familiar with mirroring for websites and the such, will know this option, while for those who are not, care is cautioned because it can delete files that you might have wanted saved.

Repair Disk Permissions is an option that saves you the trouble of going outside the program to do this. Using it, you can skip going to Disk Utility in order to repair permissions before a backup. While useful, this option has the negative side effect of making backups last much longer.

Show backup progress will give a clear indicator of the progress of the backup operation, but it will also make your backups a little slower.

Remote Backup is the must have option for those performing backups to external locations. When performing such backups to other computers over a network, file attributes can be lost, but this option will make sure they are kept so they can be restored appropriately if need be.

Auto-Connecting can be done by Déjà Vu, making sure that the network volume you want to back up to is present. This is a great option for scheduling your computer to backup in the middle of the night. It can mount both AppleTalk (apf) and Windows (smb) shares and can even unmount them after it is done, although it will only do this if the shared volume was mounted by itself, meaning it will not unmount a volume that was mounted by you or another application.

Where is the restore?
Because of its approach, Déjà Vu does not have a dedicated restore function. To restore, you simply reverse the 'What' and 'Where' columns, practically backing up the backup to the original location. It may sound strange and quirky, but it is very in line with the approach of the program.

It will handle both the restoring of local backups and network ones, however, the network ones need to have been made with the Remote Backup option enabled, otherwise the restore procedure will not give you an exact copy of what was backed up.

The Good
An easy and straightforward way to make backups. Preference pane integration makes it very handy.

The Bad
Lacks certain advanced features, such as the ability to backup only certain types of files, and to omit certain files and folders.

The Truth
A very fast and intuitive way to handle backups. Those looking for very advanced and flexible backup options should look elsewhere as this program will very like leave them cold.

Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge: