HP SimpleSave: Backup solution for dummies
(Credit:
HP)
Backing up a computer can be tricky for many people, especially those who access data via the software applications without knowing where the actual data files or folders reside on the hard drive. I have some friends who used to believe that you could back up all your office documents just by dragging and dropping the icons of Microsoft Excel, Word, and Outlook over to an external hard drive.
This is where products such as the SimpleSave external hard drive series, like the SimpleSave Portable that Hewlett-Packard made available Monday, comes into play. (The other drive in the series, the SimpleSave desktop, will be available in September.)
The series is a collaboration between HP and Western Digital. The hard drive is just a simple USB-powered compact external hard drive, much like a My Passport external hard drive, but with HP branding and HP's SimpleSave feature built-in. This SimpleSave software only works with computers running Windows.
The SimpleSave external hard drive series make backing up your documents as easy as plugging the hard drive into your computer.
The only time you need to interact with the SimpleSave software is the one click it takes to accept its License Agreement. After that, the software will automatically look for data that needs backing up and save a copy of that on its external storage. The SimpleSave backup software, which resides on the external hard drive, runs by itself as soon as you plug the drive in. It shows a countdown before it performs each of its two simple steps, which you can interrupt in case you want to further customize the backup or start a recovery.
By default, the SimpleSave software automatically makes a copy of popular known data files, including hard-to-find ones such as the Outlook archive, which is buried deep in your profile folder. After the first full backup, it will only back up files that have been changed since the last backup. The backup is simply the duplicate of the original files, making restoring very fast and easy.
When I first tried the SimpleSave Portable on my work machine, I had to leave my desk for a meeting as soon as I clicked to agree with the License Agreement. By the time I returned, all 130GB of my data was backed up. (Check the included slideshow to see how the SimpleSave backup software works.)
The SimpleSave Portable has about the same data transfer speed of most USB-powered external hard drives. However, it's the first one that you can literally plug in and forget about it--and still be sure that your data will be properly backed up.
The SimpleSave Portable is available now and costs $120 for the 320GB version and $150 for the 500GB version. The 3.5-inch-based SimpleSave Desktop, which is bigger and require a separate power adapter, will come in two 1TB and 2TB variants that cost $150 and $330, respectively.
Dong Ngo is a CNET editor who covers networking and network storage, and writes about anything else he finds interesting. You can also listen to his podcast at insidecnetlabs.cnet.com. E-mail Dong. 
Really? How do I *know* that my data is properly backed up? Just because it says it did?? Although it may do a fine job (I've never used it) and is certainly better than the backup process *most* folks are using (none), I would prefer something a bit more hands-on, personally... just so I know what its backing up.
There is NOTHING worse than thinking you're backing up your important data, only to lose it and find out that your backup system was capturing it... for whatever reason.
For my money, I choose a product such as Mozy. An off-site backup is really the most logical, since you will likely lose your data *and* your backup if your house is robbed or destroyed by fire.
Cnet must have been told not to mention the obvious knock off. Sadly advertising money beats the truth every time.
Hoping to simply backup data on a laptop and a desktop.
Hoping it really is "one click"...
Hoping to simply backup data on a laptop and a desktop.
Hoping it really is "one click"...
Ramon Ray, Editor & Technology Evangelist, Smallbiztechnology.com
It's only automatic the first time you plug it in. When you restart your computer it becomes a completely manual system that tries to start over from scratch each and every time you manually start it. You must either navigate to a certain directory and know what file to execute, or unplug the drive and plug it in again in order for monitoring to start. Even then you must be alert and cancel the impending full backup or the system will spend the next several hours doing a complete backup (again).
There is no way to start only the monitoring software by itself, much less automatically.
If you are a novice computer user you would probably not even know that your system was unprotected. Nowhere in the documentation are you alerted to this procedure.
HP customer service says this is normal operation.
A true automatic backup system would start the monitoring software each time the computer is started and perform incremental backups as files are modified. Apparently HP can't read a dictionary to understand the definition of "automatic".
There is NO help on the main menu page.
Since this thing does incremental backups, you would think it would do a full backup of the whole drive, the first time, at least as an option, and then do incrementals from there. My PC has only 29GB on it. The SimpleSave drive has 160GB. I tried to tell it to do that by adding *.* as a custom file type, but it wouldn't accept the wild cards in the file type.
Some applications use a range of file types, e.g. .tr0, .tr1, .tr999. How am I supposed to get it to back these up??
- by eiemagic December 27, 2009 6:17 PM PST
- I received the 1 Tb SimpleSave as a gift for Christmas... I'm pretty computer illiterate as far as things not dealing with surfing the internet or typing documents, etc...
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(25 Comments)Can I erase all my music files that are stored for iTunes and Limewire now that they are backed up on the SimpleSave and then iTunes will locate them on the external drive?
What about the same with my picture files, etc.?