Rethinking Online Backup and Data Recovery
System restore software completes the data recovery picture
IRVINE, CA — October 31, 2006 — Stanley Cohen, a dentist in Brooklyn, kept 800 megabytes of patient records in his dental management software. While he was upgrading the program, something went terribly wrong — the software upgrade installed default settings and overwrote Dr. Cohen’s patient records. It was worse than a root canal.
Cohen’s case illustrates a common problem. Every day, thousands of users lose critical data to malware and computer mishaps. We’ve been told ad naseum to make external back up copies of our work, but many of us still do not do this often enough. The skyrocketing sales of external hard drives and flash storage units suggest that many of us are finally beginning to heed this good advice.
One of the most convenient methods of data backup is online storage. For a small monthly fee, and sometimes even for free, customers can park copies of everything from business records to family photos on a secure server. While online backup is nothing new, only now is it gaining traction. A January 2006 survey determined that 43% of smaller companies plan to use a service provider to back up their servers.
“That’s a good thing, because 59% of them also told us they only back up to a local target so a fire or other event destroying their servers would likely destroy their backup data as well,” said Adam Couture, principal analyst, Gartner.
The usual suspects are getting in on the act, with AOL, Symantec, and McAfee expected to roll out business and residential online storage services next year. Customers who have lost data will log into their online service, click on the files or folders they want to recover, and after several hours or days of data downloads they might be back in business.
Or so you’d think.
There are some “gotchas” to online data storage, and they’re big ones. First, you may be able to retrieve documents from a remote server, but does anyone have the time to reinstall a computer operating system and the applications that run on it, and to reconfigure all those settings? And how are you supposed to access your online account if your PC crashes and the operating system (OS) won’t reboot? Finally, data is only as good as its most recent update. If you’ve made several revisions to a file since the last time it was saved to your online account, an outdated file is what you’ll recover.
Makers of data recovery software often claim their products can repair entire systems, returning them to normal. But not all data recovery products are created equal.
To be truly effective, data recovery software must track all changes in real time at the sector or block level of a hard drive. Or it must have ongoing incremental backup that creates system snapshots at intervals determined by the user, ensuring successful system recovery should a digital disaster occur.
Finally, unless the data recovery software continues to work when an operating system does not, there’s little hope of retrieving data. For that reason, users should choose a “pre-OS” utility that loads before the operating system.
As obvious as all that seems, it’s surprising how many data recovery products fall short of these basic requirements.
FarStone Technology has focused its development efforts on RestoreIT (pronounced “restore it”), a complete data backup and recovery solution that repairs entire systems — including files, applications, personal settings, and passwords — with just a few clicks of a mouse, even when an operating system is down. While backing up data, RestoreIT works entirely in the background — a truly “set it and forget it” application.
“We like to say RestoreIT is the missing piece of the data backup puzzle,” says Tom Fedro, Executive Vice President of FarStone. “What good is online storage if you can’t get to your data, or if the data stored online is several days, weeks, or even months old? We offer instant and pain-free recovery from PC problems caused by any number of issues.”
If FarStone’s growing roster of partners is an indication, the industry is beginning to agree. Although FarStone sells RestoreIT directly on its website, www.farstone.com, key OEM partners like Intel, Fujitsu, AOL, Trend Micro, Seagate, and Phoenix Technologies are the primary distributors of the software.
One RestoreIT customer is our dentist, Stanley Cohen.
When he lost his customer data, Cohen feared it would be days or even weeks before he could get his business back on track.
“Just before I threw in the towel, I tried the restore function for the first time on RestoreIT. Within a few minutes, everything was back to its original place and working. I was amazed.”
If only a root canal were as painless.
About FarStone
Founded in 1993, FarStone Technology is a leading developer of PC and network-based system recovery solutions and a provider of digital content security, replication and management utilities. FarStone is an ISO 9001 certified software publisher holding multiple technology patents. Headquartered in Irvine, CA, the company licenses its software to corporations, small businesses, educational institutions and consumers worldwide. FarStone’s global technology partners include Intel, Phoenix Technologies, Trend Micro, InterVideo, Authentium, Fujitsu, and HiNet, Taiwan.
Media Contact
Bob Menzies
Lages & Associates
949/453-8080
Bob@lages.com
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