LAS VEGAS -- Impatient PC users with large hard drives to protect have a new option for backing up their desktop. CMS Products is unveiling its Velocity series of backup systems at the Comdex trade show here this week.
The series includes external hard drives that use the new Serial ATA interface to speed backups, along with CMS's BounceBack software to manage the backup process. Velocity is the first external backup system to use Serial ATA, according to Mike LaPeters, the company's vice president of sales.
Velocity systems can move data as fast as 1.5GB per minute, if the host computer incorporates Serial ATA on the motherboard, LaPeters says. That's more than three times as fast as data transfer using USB 2.0 or Firewire interfaces, he says.
PCs without integrated Serial ATA must use a separate PCI controller card, priced separately at $79. Those PCs should see data transfer rates of about 700MB to 1GB per minute, LaPeters says.
A Velocity system with an 80GB hard drive, BounceBack software, cables, and a PCI pass-through card (necessary for connecting the hard drive to the system) will list for $299. The price rises to $399 for a 120GB system, and to $549 for a 200GB system. The Velocity systems will be available in December.
Software Side
The BounceBack software is designed to make a full, uncompressed backup of an entire hard drive, including the operating system. It then makes regular incremental changes to that data.
The backup copy is bootable, meaning that you can be up and running quickly even if your internal hard drive fails completely, LaPeters says. To demonstrate, he removed the internal hard drive of a Dell desktop system at CMS's booth here. When he attempted to boot up the system, it stalled, saying it couldn't find the hard drive.
With a few keystrokes, LaPeters directed the system to boot from the external hard drive and about a minute later the PC appeared to be working as usual.
Velocity's backup software also supports versioning, allowing users to keep multiple versions of important documents and restore earlier versions of documents that go through multiple edits.
For more Comdex news, check PCWorld.com's ongoing coverage of the trade show.
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