Re-Launch Contest #1: NTI Backup Now 5

[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

[GadgetDave]

3 things: 1 home, 4 computers, 3 TB of drive space ... I need a solution like this that will handle the backups. We'll see if it works better than Windows Home Server.

[Gordo]

The 'Hard Drive spanning' feature looks interesting. I have a number of smaller hard drives that sit unused. Adding them to external USB cases and including them in my current backup process would be useful.

[pocketdoc]

I would like to set up automatic network backup.

[makicr]

Network backup with drive/disk spanning, to allow for backup to multiple disks, unattended. So I can stay nightey-night during the backup.

[supreme_one3]

Once my C drive became corrupt and my computer wouldn't start. :mad: I had all my important information on my C drive and I lost it all.:eek: It was horrible. If I had some decent backup software, I would definitely use it. It would save a lot of grief.:(

[Richard OKane]

My wife got a laptop for Christmas, and then got a new camera with her bonus in January.
Last week, her laptop drive died. No indication - nothing!
She lost all her new pics :(
Now she understands why I say "Backup".
This s/w will make it easier for her (I hope!)

[panegryst]

the most useful feature of this product is likely to be the backup feature

[jlafount]

I would go with the Network Drive Support. Reassuring to keep my data on remote computers

[timmy]

Just like Dyvim I spent lots of time ripping my CD collection and adding album art etc etc. Adding the album art was done through a freeware ID3 tagger that usually work really good. In the ID3 tag SW there was an Explorer like interface to browse the music collection via folders. The developer had been "thoughtful" enough to also add the usual Explorer functionality like Delete...

I still don't know how I did it, but suddenly the computer was really unresponsive and when I realized that the hard drive indicator was constantly glowing, I freaked out and had to hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to stop. But by then I had already lost around 60% of all the music files...

[jwquinlan]

I like that it allows you to filter by file.

[David Horn]

I once installed a new hard disk in a PC, and preparing to install Windows onto it and copy my data across I cheerfully typed "format d:" and agreed to it. About 10 minutes later I realised I'd picked the wrong drive.

Worse, it was a friend's computer. :(

[kbpcman]

I would definitely utilize the "Network Drive Support" feature. I have a large networked hard drive that I would love to have my backup files stored on.

[follick]

Backup across the network would be nice.

[gjohansen]

The thought of being able to backup all the PCs on the network is what appeals to me. Trying to get other family members to do decent backups (or security for that matter) drives me crazy. I get worried if I don't have at least three different sets of backups on different drives. Theres's nothing like finding out that you just backed up a corrupted version of something after you deleted the original for some reason.

[JCRiverRats]

I like the ability to backup to any media simply and easy.

[rocky_raher]

I like the ability to backup all PC's on the network!

[Ploobers]

I'll have to vote for the network backup support. It's tough remembering to copy my files to the server and then back them up. This would make it so I wouldn't even be involved, which is what I'm trying more and more to have my software do.

[ironguy]

My stepdaughter is a digital photo fiend. SHe has an older Canon 6mp camera and a iPhone. SHe takes thousands of pictures. Recently, she brought the laptop to me and said it wouldn't start.

Well, sure enough. ON boot I got all kinds of corrupted file errors. I asked her, "You did back up all your pics, right?" Well of course she didn't!

I tried reloading Windows (didn't work) and a bunch of other stuff. It soon became clear that the drive was nearly dead.

I was able to remove the drive and connect it to my PC and work through the security issues. I was only able to save about half of her pics before the drive stopped responding completely.

Just think how much grief would have been saved if we has NTI Backup!

[Cold Flame]

The most important feature of this software to me is the automated backups as well as being able to backup any PC on your network. It would absolutely devastating to me to lose my music collection, and more importantly, my digital pictures.

I try to be diligent with my backups, but I never seem to be 100% caught up. This might just help do the trick! =)

[jimlat]

The backup to any computer on the home network is a great idea...as someone else said, the ability to back up to a central, large HD computer w/o having to use a thumb drive, and to do it automatically and on a schedule is awesome....:D

[jlg123456]

I like the Open file backup feature the most.

[chrhamil]

I think the most useful feature would be the automatic backup scheduling. That way I could just schedule my backups and not worry about losing data.

[Kevin Jackson]

I have almost lost data from 3 different laptops in the past, so being able to schedule backups of them all would definitely be a plus.

[spacehippie2k]

Backing up to Blu-Ray, since I hope to be upgrading my laptop soon...

[piperpilot]

We had one disk in our RAID-controlled desktop go bad, and it's been downhill ever since because we never backed up our system. Some files will never be recovered, so this program would be a heck of a big improvement.

[Heatwave316]

First, being able to back-up a network would be very helpful. We have a small network at home, and can never seem to get the back-up software to back-up both computers. Why, I have no idea.

2nd - as I mentioned, the back-up software I use now is kind of strange. It seems to want to update constantly instead of once a week. I tried to use it as a restore point, and it had the same problem as my desktop. I am in big need of something better!!!

[mmidgley]

Back when I owned an iPAQ 5555 (storage RAM refreshed by battery power) I never had a problem, until once I traveled out of town. In the morning the device wouldn't turn on. I knew its battery was in good shape, but nothing. I had to lookup how to perform the hard reset because it was so unusual to have to do this (in my experience with that iPAQ). I finally did a hard reset and really wished my backup on the SD card was more recent.

m.

[The Yaz]

I like the idea of backing up multiple computers to one network drive. I've been eyeing a Buffalo external drive that also runs a usb print server. This could make the process turn out really cool!

[oopl]

It's gotta be the cross network feature.

[andrew_lee]

Scheduling backups over the network would be really useful.

[edgar]

Automated backup of my laptop - secondary to my carbonite subscription.

This is a very nice on the road alternative for backing up when the internet isn't always available or the cost is prohibitive. I NEED this. I have critical files I am constantly manually backing up. MS just doesn't provide a satisfactory solution, and most others are proprietorially tied to their hardware, or reduced versions.

[wynand32]

I (frighteningly so) have 7 systems on my home network. I hate backing them all up, so the network backup capabilities would be nice.

[John Lane]

I lost my hard drive with all my photos on it, and most were not backed up. Worse, my nephew was killed in a car crash shortly thereafter. I plan on having the hard drive professionally fixed one day, but I just can't spare the cash yet.

[mamoleh]

I've been terrible! Just backing up, period, would be an improvement!

[awinner]

Getting my dauters to backup thier sysems on the network would save me from having to hear them whine when they get some Malware on thier computers and I have to rebuild the OS, but they have to rerip all thier CD's. Not to mention the lost homework, photo's,.....

[haveblue128]

I am the absent minded professor type to the core. In the past, I have totally failed to arrange a good backup plan for both PCs.

In my third year of grad school-well into writing a dissertation-while working late one night, I heard the sound of impending disaster: My hard drive suddenly stopped working and my system was unable to ID it. Next, my entire PC began to vibrate. It sounded like tiny beer cans were bouncing around inside. The hard drive was dead albeit it sounded like it threw a tie-rod.

While most of my research and 140 pages of my dissertation had already been printed out, I lost nearly three months worth of work as I write directly to my PC. Beyond that a full 80 gig HD was lost with a large picture library. Wedding pix, our golden retrievers and fun shot of my pals. While in "Backup Rehab" since that time, I am of a mind that you can't backup your work too much. The NTI software would help as a "one-size-fits all" backup is less than perfect. :eek:

[txa1265]

My horror story was when my wife's laptop died hard, and since she was terrible about keeping her PDA charged it was completely dead as well - and the only backup was on a Jaz disk that had become corrupted.

Our resulting systems is crappy but effective - periodic full backups, and multiple continuous manual backups of critical files.

Per machine!

So the #1 feature I saw was the net backup for all computers: both my laptops, my wife's PC and the kids laptop ... all together. *that* would be cool!

[dave_p_1]

Encryption is the key feature I'm looking for. I've been lucky. I upgrade computers often enough that my hard drives don't have time to fail. But I did have a scare when my latest PC wouldn't boot. It turned out to be a broken SATA cable but I decided to try to be good with backups. The generic solution I have, though, doesn't do encryption and I worry about having all sorts of personal information on a CD.

[KevinM10]

All features, in fact I don't have backup software, just RAID and an additional hard drive that I manually backup files.

My son accidentally deleted the entire music library off the primary "server" using itunes delete. (I've got all the music on one PC and all household PC's map to it.) He thought he was only deleting from his local library.

Worked out since I started the effort using WMA ripped with Windows media player (mistake-quality) while I-Tunes is, well I-Tunes. Decided to re-rip everything with exact audio copy in MP3 format universal compatibility. Also changed the naming scheme to keep everyone happy. We're about 45% re-ripped.

Joy :)

[Jason Dunn]

Contest closed, no further entries will be counted. Please look for the winners to be announced within the next 48 hours.