Data Backup Help

In my never-ending role trying to save people from themselves, let me nag a little more about data backups. OK, let me point out some interesting news items that will help you backup. That sounds a bit more positive, doesn’t it?

First, EMC continues to provide products for the SMB market. My buddy Deni Connor writes about EMC’s upgrade to its Retrospect backup software. (see top story on the right). EMC cares enough about this market to be one of the primary sponsors in our Small Business Technology Tour last spring, and I wrote last August about their presentation. It appears EMC meant what they said when they proclaimed a focus on the small and medium business storage market.

Second, EMC folds its acquired Dantz company into the Retrospect product name, deleting the Dantz name from the market. A story in TechWorld from across the pond gives more details, some of which apply to SMBs.

Finally, an interesting press release from CBL Data Recovery Technologies Inc. caught my eye. They made a deal to enable all UPS Stores and Mail Boxes Etc. locations to become a drop-off point for dead drives carrying valuable data that must be recovered. The data better be valuable, because pulling data from a dead hard drive costs hundreds (if you’re lucky) to thousands of dollars. (I haven’t tested CBL and this is not a review, but kudos to their convenience initiative).

Today’s lesson? Backup software always, and I mean always, costs less than recovering data from a corrupted or dead disk of any kind.