On one of my recent radio shows, a Katrina evacuee from New Orleans phoned in and asked about recovering his hard drive from his computer that had likely been submerged in the filthy water that had been drowning New Orleans. While there have been some recent blogs published about recovering submerged hard drives, albeit with alleged mixed degrees of success, the prognosis is poor.

The three most important words in computing are “Backup, Backup, and Backup”. Murphy’s first law of computing is: “A properly backed up hard drive will never fail, but the first time you do not have a current backup, the hard drive will always fail at the most inopportune moment.” Hard drives are electromechanical devices; the question is not “IF” the hard drive will fail, but “WHEN” will it fail. Recovering data from a failed hard drive, if even possible, may cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. Consider what we commonly save to our hard drives; important files such as documents, family photos, genealogy records, banking and tax information, important business records, and a panoply of other critical data.

With the near universal availability of CD and DVD burning drives, and the very low cost of appropriate blank media, there is no rational reason why critical files are not backed up, period. With the recent plunge in hard drive prices, as well as the ready availability of external hard drives and inexpensive external drive cases, there is no longer a fiscal reason for not having a current backup of all of the critical files on a hard drive, if not an entire “image” (complete copy) of the data on the hard drive that can be easily restored to a new hard drive or computer if disaster strikes. Living on the Gulf coast, and a target for hurricanes myself, a potential evacuation is not beyond the realm of reality. In the event of adequate evacuation notice, I would try and make room and time to take my external hard drive with my complete current backup, as well as a few vital CD and DVD discs with the necessary recovery software, as well as a redundant set of critical personal data files. Personally, for my primary backups, I use a 160 gig hard drive which I installed in a locally purchased AdsTech USB 2.0 External Drive Kit (www.adstech.com). This AdsTech external drive case, with the hard drive installed, weighs less than two pounds, and is about the size of a typical hardcover book, and uses a common and universal PC power cable and a common USB cable. Along with a few CDs and DVDs, this external drive will allow me to recover from disastrous circumstances, even if my computer were to be destroyed.

NewTech Infosystems, better known by the acronym NTI (www.ntius.com) is one of the leading publishers of backup software, with its premier product NTI Backup NOW! 4.0 Deluxe Suite, a most capable and comprehensive backup utility. Backup NOW! is also included in NTI’s excellent and best selling CD & DVD Maker 7 Titanium Suite. With such software, scheduling automated backups is easy, and recovery discs can be created.

One issue that is sometimes raised is the time it takes to make and maintain backups, an issue that many of us will ultimately regret. For those of us who may never seem to have the time to perform backups, NTI recently released version 3 of its automatic backup utility, Shadow. Shadow is available for PC, MAC, and network users, and is an automated backup utility that saves files in their native format for ease in restoring when necessary. What is especially exciting about Shadow is its price, if purchased directly from NTI’s website – a remarkably low price of 99 cents, a whopping near 97 percent discount off its regular retail price of $30! This is a limited time offer, scheduled to expire in mid-November, 2005.

Shadow is easy to install and configure, and differs from most other backup products by offering real-time and continuous backups in the background, negating the need for periodic backups, as the data on the backup media is always current. Files can be restored by simply using the native drag and drop function. Shadow can also synchronize backups from other devices as well, including external devices such as the popular USB flash drives, and media players. Since we often change our minds, and wish to restore earlier versions of data, Shadow offers the option to save from one to 10 prior versions of files, enabling easy restoring of the earlier versions.

As a bonus, NTI is also offering a coupon on its website (no purchase required) good for half off any other NTI product purchased from NTI’s online store.

With products such as the bargain priced Shadow, and a device such as an external hard drive or CD/DVD burner, there is now absolutely no reason why current backups should not be maintained. With retrospect, what if my unfortunate caller from New Orleans had a current backup, and had taken his current backup with him?

SHADOW SCREENSHOTS for DOWNLOAD: http://www.ntius.com/default.asp?p=shadow/shadow_screenshot

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