Advertisement

Net wants to get your back-up

Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0

Sun Microsystems chief executive Scott McNealy two years ago joked with a group of people about back-up. 'You do it every day, don't you?' he asked. Everybody laughed. 'At Sun, we have people whose only job is to back up data. If they don't do it every day, they get fired.' Most of us are not at Sun Microsystems, nor do we have the funds to pay others to back up our data. So, do we back up every day? I doubt it.

Should you be worried? How important is your data? Those with experience and sense do some kind of back-up, even if only to a floppy, a Zip or some other kind of disk.

Now it is possible to use the Internet. A company called Connected (www.connected. com) has a product called Connected Online Backup aimed at all those who do not want to bother backing up data but who are worried about what might happen.

For 30 days, you can give the product a try and see what you think, although their software runs only on PCs with DOS or Windows.

Connected encrypts your data with a password of your choosing and supports a technology of its own called Delta Block Technology which it says allows large amounts of data to be backed up quickly and cheaply.

The application lets you back up at night or some other time when you are not using the machine.

All of this sounds good and they seem to deliver what they promise. The question is: do you want what they promise? If you have any system other than Windows or DOS, you have no choice, which seems a pity. Why not support the others? Another question is the security. Would you want to trust somebody on the other side of the world with your data? But I suspect this is not so big an issue - they seem to have a good model for encrypting data.

Advertisement
Select Voice
Choose your listening speed
Get through articles 2-3x faster
1.1x
220 WPM
Slow
Normal
Fast
1.1x