BIOS: Technology Means Business

CMS Products’ latest backup and restore product is an external ultra-portable (it’ll just about slip into a shirt pocket) 2.5-inch hard disk drive (130x75x30mm, 198g). Available with a storage capacity from 40- to 160GB (£95 to £175 ex. VAT), it also comes with good backup and restore software, and is backed by a 3-year warranty.

The ABSplus product line is a relatively comprehensive all-in-one software and hardware solution providing you with complete backup, restore and disaster recovery capabilities and a bootable hard disk drive.

The silver-and-black ABSplus is available in portable (reviewed here) or desktop versions and supports backup, archival and migration of data. The portable ABSplus is available with the choice of USB 2.0, PCMCIA or FireWire interfaces. The desktop ABSplus is available in capacities ranging between 80GB to 250GB, and also comes with USB 2.0, PCMCIA or FireWire interfaces. The entire ABSplus product family is compatible with Windows 98SE/ME/2000 and XP operating systems as well as Mac OS X (but not Linux).

BounceBack Professional 7.1, the company’s stand-alone backup and disaster recovery software solution (supplied with ABSplus, otherwise £45 ex. VAT), is compatible with any manufacturers’ hard disk drive configurations, including internal and external drives. BounceBack Professional enables you to safeguard data and applications from loss, theft or complete hard disk drive failure. BounceBack Professional provides a relatively easy-to-use backup and restore capabilities for complete disaster recovery, and supports writable DVD or CD optical storage for Windows users who do not have an external hard disk drive.

One of the biggest selling points of the device is its incorporation of an Automatic Launcher to monitor and launch backups upon connection - thus eliminating the hassle associated with manual backup. All backed up data is saved in native file format to provide fast, easy data recovery and access, and it can even be connected to a compatible system or computer to be used as a regular external hard disk drive. The software also creates a bootable backup copy of the source drive for instant recovery, allowing you to swap your external backup drive with your laptop or desktop’s failed internal hard disk drive, and enables rapid data recovery by quickly restoring individual files and folders directly from the designated backup drive.

The ABSplus incorporates a QuickRestore module to further enhance its disaster recovery and backup capabilities. QuickRestore simplifies the data recovery process by allowing you to recover data as a result of hard disk drive failure or accidental deletion by simply clicking on the software’s ‘Restore’ button. Once activated, the backup device performs a complete restoration of only selected data from the most recent backup of the computer’s hard disk drive.

BounceBack Professional automatically partitions the ABSplus to match the partition table on your hard drive, so it can restore logical drives as well as your main C: drive. Although there is less need to partition drives these days, we found the automatic partitioning a welcome convenience. BounceBack does not compress your files, so you can read and write them with everyday applications and utilities. But that also means that 160GB is the limit of what you can back up.

BounceBack Professional maintains multiple copies of specified files for Windows users - during each backup, changed files are backed up and maintained individually. Multiple versions of the same file can be compared and restored on the source drive. The software can also initiate a scan and compare the backed up data files for Windows users. The most recent files from either location are exchanged and synchronised with each other. It’s not without some significant limitations though, most noticeably the lack of compression, encryption, or support for tape.

Also included in the package is copy2go, a multimedia organising and backup program. The software searches your local hard disk drives for pictures, music and video and provides a simple interface for quickly backing them up. This is one of that new wave of products that looks to organise your files independent of the folder structure, like Google’s Picasa. This software is very simple, but is intuitive and does work.

CMS’ ABSplus is a good value per gigabyte. It is, however, quite slow (the USB model is almost half the speed of the PCMCIA and at least six times slower than the FireWire model). Of course, backup is seldom a time-critical activity. What’s much more important is for the backup to be there when you need it, and the provided software is definitely up to the task. We’d just like to have seen more data security features.

[6.5]

[Best Storage Pricing UK]
[Best Storage Pricing US]