[Jason Dunn]

Here's our first giveaway, courtesy of <a href="http://www.ntius.com/default.asp" target="_blank">NTI</a> (NewTech InfoSystems): four copies of <a href="http://www.ntius.com/backup_now.asp?p=s&amp;pic=2" target="_blank">NTI Backup Now 5</a>, valued at $49.99 USD each. Here's a bit about the product:<br /><em><br />&quot;NTI Backup Now 5 improves on the best PC backup protection available. NTI's newest version is the only backup software to provide completely modular upgrade path. Start with Standard version for stand-alone and complete network backup of all attached PCs. Backup to Hard Drives, Flash Drives, CD, DVD or choose any attached drive letter.&quot;</em><br /><br /><img border="1" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/500/dht/auto/1204912833.usr1.jpg" alt="" /><br /><br /><strong>Here's how to enter:</strong> just post a message as a reply telling me either <a href="http://www.ntius.com/backup_now.asp" target="_blank">what feature of NTI Backup Now 5</a> you think would be the most useful, or post a story about your own experience losing data (or having the most awesome data protection scheme on the planet). There's one post per person allowed, and four winners will be randomly chosen. The contest will stay open for entries until April 7th, 2008.<br /><br />Special thanks to NTI for their donation of this software!

[Jason Dunn]

Here's our first giveaway, courtesy of <a href="http://www.ntius.com/default.asp" target="_blank">NTI</a> (NewTech InfoSystems): four copies of <a href="http://www.ntius.com/backup_now.asp?p=s&amp;pic=2" target="_blank">NTI Backup Now 5</a>, valued at $49.99 USD each. Here's a bit about the product:<br /><em><br />&quot;NTI Backup Now 5 improves on the best PC backup protection available. NTI's newest version is the only backup software to provide completely modular upgrade path. Start with Standard version for stand-alone and complete network backup of all attached PCs. Backup to Hard Drives, Flash Drives, CD, DVD or choose any attached drive letter.&quot;</em><br /><br /><img border="1" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/500/dht/auto/1204912833.usr1.jpg" alt="" /><br /><br /><strong>Here's how to enter:</strong> just post a message as a reply telling me either <a href="http://www.ntius.com/backup_now.asp" target="_blank">what feature of NTI Backup Now 5</a> you think would be the most useful, or post a story about your own experience losing data (or having the most awesome data protection scheme on the planet). There's one post per person allowed, and four winners will be randomly chosen. The contest will stay open for entries until April 7th, 2008.<br /><br />Special thanks to NTI for their donation of this software!

[Dyvim]

I trashed a 250 GB external USB hard drive (by straightening the wheeled file cabinet it sat upon; the power cord or USB cable in back pulled taut and dropped the drive to the floor- curse my anal retentive impulse to straighten my file cabinet so that it was perfectly aligned with my desk). And all this was just hours before a 500 GB network drive was due to be delivered that I was going to immediately use to backup the contents of my (full) 250 GB drive.

I lost a huge collection of lossless music files I'd ripped and painstakingly adjusted the ID3 tags just the way I wanted them AND found or scanned in 480x480 artwork for, plus photos and video. Fortunately I was able to recover all the video from my video camera's HDD (never emptied and not yet filled) and most of the photos between the latest DVD backup and the camera's 4 GB CF card. And the music, well I still have the CD's, but even though this happened over a year ago I still haven't finished re-ripping my entire music collection in lossless (this time with 600x600 album art- now I wish I'd done 800x800).

[cmchavez]

Being able to run a backup of any computer connected to my home network would definitely be a plus. I try to encourage the kids to save a copy of their docs (school reports, homework, etc...) on the main home computer, which I then backup to an external drive, but being able to do this automatically without having to pull them into the "sneaker net" would be much more preferable.

[raaden]

Without a doubt the best feature is being able to backup networked PC's. With one desktop and three laptops in the household being able to back them all up from one place is a great feature... Especially when my daughter can't quite seem to understand that if you carry around a laptop playing music and movies on it while it is running you will eventually end up destroying the hard drive. BTW she is on her second HD and 49.99 would have been well worth the price of not having to hear her tell me her life was over if I couldn't get her files back.

[blang]

I do have a backup program now but the program really uses a lot of resources and slows up my computer. Although it never backs up as scheduled (don't know why) I need to find another backup program that backs up at the scheduled time and doesn't hog all of my resources.

[Cybrid]

I've used Acronis and Norton Ghost for years....
I've learn't to backup my data the hard way. From my Dad!

He once asked me to look at his computer, it had a secondary drive which was running really slow. The PC ran fine if you didn't attempt to access that drive. I pulled it out and began backing up his data.

He'd essentially filled the drive up to within 4 Mb of 60 Gb using an audio recording app for internet radio. He had 10,000+ .doc/ .pdf files in a single folder. I asked " Why not sort them into subfolders? " and he responded " Who has time? "

Anyway, a drive that full doesn't respond well to GUI OS'es. I had to
XCOPY, Del, format for hours.

[Reid Kistler]

Ability to back up across a network is certainly useful - but at moment the greater appeal of NTI v5 is Vista compatibility, as our older copy does not appear to support MS' new OS (which, alas, we will soon be running on one machine...).

rkistler / se mi

[dshep2020]

I would use it to backup up multiple PC using file and folder backup. I would also use the drive and disc spanning feature.

[elipsoid]

Network Drive Support would be really nice, I could backup all my pcs to 1 network drive.

[rtrueman]

For me, the encryption of the backup is essential. I, like most serious techies, have a significant amount of HD space at home. I'm strict about making backups to a networked drive, daily, but never fully put in to place something for off site backups. I have thousands of image files on my NAS and I even go as far as to burn them to DVDs. The DVDs are sitting next to the NAS!

To store something remotely, the backup has to be secure and that means encryption. I don't want everyone working at the remote site being able to poke through my images, financial information or prescriptions. If the encryption is good, it'll be the product for me!

Rob