Don’t worry, Paragon Backup & Recovery 10.1 Free Edition really is free. And it is a backup and recovery tool. But I’m not sure I would call it a paragon among programs of its kind, even though Paragon Software Group has been developing it for 15 years now. Unlike many backup products, which are designed to back up your files, Paragon concentrates on creating images of your hard drive. If … [Read more...]
Hey! You! Get off of My Cloud!
Review of the 3X Remote Backup Appliance The headline of the pitch I received back in November read “3X Systems Launches Private Backup Cloud Appliance for SMBs”. The notion of a “private cloud” intrigued me, so I decided to follow up. (Besides, no one quoted in the press release used the word “excited,” so they get extra points.) We all talk about “the cloud” as if it’s some amorphous collective … [Read more...]
Saved by the Box
When I posted on LinkedIn that I was looking for subjects for this week’s Backup Reminder, David Battino pointed me to a blog post over on O’Reilly Digital Media. The post dates back to January of this year and recounts the hard drive failure the author, Darwin Grosse, suffered at Christmas—whereupon he discovered his most recent backup was four months old. Ouch. Since that time, Darwin … [Read more...]
Just Add Water? Memeo Instant Backup
When I first heard about Memeo Instant Backup, I objected that no program that backed up your entire hard drive could possibly be “instant.” Hard drives are getting bigger and bigger, so copying them takes longer and longer. Robert Phillips explained to me that the “instant” part refers to the fact that the backup process starts instantly: as soon as you install the product, it begins backing you … [Read more...]
StarWind: SAN Made Simple
So right after he finished explaining to me that he really couldn’t take the time to evaluate StarWind’s products, the Ur-Guru went ahead and did it anyway. And here’s what he had to say about them. There are a lot of technical terms in this post, partly because it’s about enterprise software, and partly because enterprise software products are more complex and partly because the author is (though … [Read more...]