From The Show Floor - Prosoft Introduces Data Backup, Upgrades Data Rescue

by , 12:00 PM EST, January 9th, 2004

Losing your data, no matter what the reason, is never any fun. Fortunately, the good folks at Prosoft Engineering announced two new products designed to help backup and recover your data. We took a few moments to speak with Sherri Jessen, Partnership Manager, to learn more about these products.

The first product is Data Backup 2.0, a utility that can perform backup, restore and synchronization of your files. Unlike some other utilities, the user interface for Data Backup is simple and intuitive. To select files to backup, you can either select a preconfigured profile (like user files) or simply drag and drop the volumes, files or folders to the Source or Destination windows. There are copy, clone, versioned, full, incremental and synchronize modes, which should meet just about anyone's backup needs. Another benefit of Data Backup is that, except for compressed backups, the backup is saved as Mac files, allowing for quick retrieval if necessary. There's also an encryption option, and to round things out, you can schedule backups when convenient.

The next product is Data Rescue X 10.4, a data recovery utility that, unlike some other utilities, focuses on data recovery rather than data repair. We think this is a good strategy since by the time your drive is acting up, getting your data back is the most important thing. Data Rescue will thoroughly scan your hard drive and recover any data possible. This feature is so thorough that Prosoft proudly states they can even recover deleted pictures from flash media used in digital cameras. They were also one of the few utilities that could recover data from drives with an Oxford chip that were trashed after updating to Mac OS X 10.3. Another interesting feature is an Early Warning, which will watch your drive and let you know if files start disappearing. This is a great feature since by the time you notices file are gone, it may be too late.

Both products will be available in mid-January. Data Backup 2.0 will be priced at $49, and Data Rescue X 10.4 at $89.

Prosoft Engineering