Think Online Backup and Virus Protection is All You Need? Think Again.

System Restoration Software Completes the Data Recovery Picture

IRVINE, Calif. -- Stanley Cohen, a dentist in Brooklyn, kept his patient's records - all 800 megabytes of them - stored within his dental management software application. One day, when upgrading to the program's latest version, everything seemed to go as planned, but something was terribly wrong. Before he knew it, the upgraded system had reverted all of his settings back to default levels and to Cohen's horror, it had deleted his precious patient records. The experience was no less painful than a root canal.

Cohen's case illustrates a common problem. Every day, thousands of users lose critical data to malware and computer mishaps. From our earliest experiences with computers, we have been told, ad naseum, to make back up copies of our work somewhere off the computer. Now, having been burned one too many times, users are beginning to investigate their options. The skyrocketing sales of external hard drives and flash storage units suggest many of us are beginning to heed the advice.

Currently, one of the most convenient methods for protecting data is online storage. For a small monthly fee, and sometimes even for free, customers can park everything from business records to family photos on a remote server providing a copy in a secure location. While online backup is nothing new - the concept was introduced in the mid-'90s by companies like Driveway and xDrive - it is only now beginning to gain traction.

According to Gartner, demand for new storage services among small and mid-sized businesses is increasing. A January 2006 survey found that 43 percent of smaller companies plan to use a service provider to backup their servers ("Midsize Business Storage Service Opportunities, North America, 2006").

"That's a good thing, because 59 percent 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.

Not surprisingly, the usual suspects will soon be getting in on the act, with AOL, Symantec and McAfee expected to roll out business and residential online storage offerings next year. Customers will log into the site, click on any file or folder they want to download, and they're back in business.

Or so you would think.

There are a few gotchas to storing your data online, and they're big ones. First, no matter how easy it may be to retrieve documents from a remote server, does anyone really have the time to reinstall and reconfigure all those programs and settings on their computers? And more importantly, how can you access a Web site to download your data if your PC crashes and the operating system (OS) won't load? No OS, no Web access. Finally, data is only as good as its recency. If you've made revisions to a file since the last time it was stored and your PC crashes, you'll only be able to recover outdated versions of your work.

Developers of data recovery software, a relatively new class of application, often claim their products can rebuild entire systems, returning them to normal. But not all recovery products are created equal.

To be truly effective, recovery software must keep track of all changes, in real time, at the most granular increments, the sector / block level, of a hard drive. Ongoing incremental backup means a snapshot is created of these real time changes on a cadence determined by the user or by default when the software is installed, ensuring successful system recovery should a digital disaster occur. Further, unless the recovery software continues to work when an operating system crashes, there's little hope of retrieving most data or applications. For that reason, users should choose a 'pre-OS' utility, meaning that it loads before the operating system does, even if the OS doesn't load at all.

As obvious as all that seems, it's surprising how many recovery products fall short of those basic requirements.

FarStone, based in the heart of Southern California's Tech Coast, has poured its cumulative knowledge of system restoration into RestoreIT (pronounced "restore it"), a complete backup and recovery solution that lets users rebuild their entire system - including files, applications, personal settings and passwords - with just a few clicks of a mouse, whether the operating system is able to load or not. What's more, everything works in the background, without the user having to think about it, truly a "set it and forget it" application.

"We like to say RestoreIT is the missing piece of the backup puzzle," says Tom Fedro, executive vice president at FarStone. "What good is online storage if you can't get to your data, or what's stored online is several days, weeks or even months old? We add value by providing instant and pain-free recovery from PC problems caused by any number of issues including: malware intrusions, faulty software installations, inadvertently deleted files or even an operating system crash or hard drive failure."

And if FarStone's growing partner roster is any indication, the industry is beginning to agree. Although the company sells directly through its website, www.farstone.com, the primary distribution channel is through key OEM partners; the likes of which include industry leaders Intel, Fujitsu, AOL, Trend Micro, Seagate and Phoenix Technologies. All of these companies have engaged in multi-year, private label, development, bundling and / or integrated hosted application agreements with FarStone. As trusted advisors to millions of end users these organizations are now providing their customers with an extra measure of security and convenience - and the peace of mind that comes from knowing the data recovery puzzle is finally solved and that they and their data are truly protected from PC problems and complete digital disasters.

One of those customers is our dentist, Stanley Cohen.

"RestoreIT was included with my computer when I bought it," Cohen explained. "To be honest, I never really gave it much thought and had no clue as to its powerful capabilities."

When he lost his data to a faulty software installation, Cohen feared it would be days or even weeks before he could get his business back on track again, believing he would have to uninstall the faulty upgrade and order a new application disc from the vendor before he could even think about reconstructing his data files again.

"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 was that 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, Calif., the company licenses its software to corporations, small businesses, educational institutions and consumers worldwide. FarStone's global technology partners include Intel, Phoenix Technologies, Seagate, Trend Micro, InterVideo, AOL, Authentium, Fujitsu, and HiNet, Taiwan. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.farstone.com.