If you are not regularly backing up your system then you are inviting
trouble. I can remember the old days of the MS-DOS operating system
and how I would backup my PC's vital files onto an ever-growing collection
of 5 1/4 inch floppy disks. You remember floppy disks, kids, don't you? Then
there were 3.5 inch floppies. And then Iomega introduced ZIP and Jaz drives,
and today hard drive storage space is dirt cheap and virtually unlimited.
Now you can buy a 500GB
Buffalo Backup for under $150 and that's considered small!
But through all of the changes in media, the key part of your backup
strategy always was the backup software you used. Many people used the
backup and restore functions built into Windows but it was never really that
robust. You want something that is stupid easy to use -- something a three
old could understand. And you want it to be flexible so that you can
customize the backup schedule to your specific needs.
Avanquest, makers of fine tools such as My
Logo Maker and My Invoices
& Estimates, have released a new tool called AutoSave
Essentials. I think this is one of the neatest backup tools I have
seen in a long time, and there are a number of important differences to this
tool worth noting.
First, AutoSave
Essentials is very easy to install and use. It uses large icons and
simple instructions. It's wizard interface makes it easy to set up your
backup plan. You merely select the files and folders you wish to backup, the
destination device you want to backup to, and the frequency with which you
want to backup your data. You can backup to another drive, a storage device
and even a USB thumb drive. You can also setup AutoSave
Essentials to backup your files to a CD burner drive and burn the CD
for you, too. No other utilities required. Spanning multiple CDs is also
easy.
AutoSave
Essentials has a very flexible scheduling option enabling you to use
a calendar to set backups daily, weekly, monthly, with every machine
start-up or manually. You can even tell it to backup continuously if you so
desire.
Laptop users frequently have backup challenges that desktop
users do not. Desktops are always connected to a LAN, WAN or backup device.
Laptops are not. So it is not unusual for a laptop owner without a good
backup plan to lose everything when hard drive failure occurs. AutoSave
Essentials has a neat solution for this. It can log all updated
files and automatically back them up when you reconnect your laptop to your
LAN, WAN or backup device. This is an intelligent backup approach and very
easy to manage with AutoSave
Essentials.
AutoSave
Essentials can also archive backups. For instance, you might set it
to backup data on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings and to maintain
backups for three weeks at all times. That's a very helpful feature when you
have accidentally deleted or modified an older file. Now you can easily
retrieve files even from a few weeks or months back. Just create the backup
schedule and select the options that are right for you.
You may, if so desired, maintain a backup off-site using an
FTP server of your own choosing. For instance, I maintain an inexpensive
FilesAnywhere account. I could easily provide my FTP account information to AutoSave
Essentials and then have it backup all my local files to the
FIlesAnywhere account or even to my web server. For those individuals or
companies seeking the ultimate in data protection, this off-site backup
feature is highly recommended.
We all collect a variety of critical files ranging from
music, photos, videos, financial and word processing documents. Now you can
protect them with ease by using the AutoSave
Essentials software wizard to create a custom backup strategy for
your system. To try a 30 day free trial or purchase a copy, please click here.
Autosave Essentials
