Product Reviews & Quotes for CMS Portable Backup Solutions

CMS Products Protect Data On Desktops & Notebooks
Processor Magazine - 7/1/2008

Professional-Class Solutions To Encrypt, Back Up, Restore & Recover

CMS Products Protect Data On Desktops & Notebooks

Daniel P. Dern
Processor Magazine
7/1/2008

For two and a half decades, CMS Products has been providing professional-grade client-side storage and backup/restore/disaster recovery products for desktop and notebook computer users and also a wide range of laptop hard drive upgrade solutions. Products from CMS (800/327-5773; www.cmsproducts.com) can be found in small to medium-sized enterprises, larger enterprises, government agencies, and educational institutions, as well as the SOHO and consumer spaces, in more than 90 countries.

Recently, Processor spoke with Gary Streuter, vice president of marketing at CMS Products, to get his perspective on the latest industry happenings and the goings-on at his company.

What are the biggest IT-related issues facing today’s small to midsized enterprise?

“Small to midsized companies have a growing number of sales, field service, engineers, telecommuters, and other employees working outside the corporate firewall,” says Streuter. “To be productive, they often need sensitive data on their notebook hard drives, flash drives, or other devices—which the company can’t let be compromised by device failure, user error, loss, or theft. The potential downside if the data is compromised is significant.”

Equally important as protecting data, says Streuter, “remote workers need their computers to work. And while hard drives have become physically reliable, there are a lot of soft failures, like viruses, malware, or bad patches, which can keep a system from booting.” A new system typically has 15 to 16GB of data, which is too much to put on optical media, Streuter notes. “Waiting a few hours to download and restore an image, or a day for a new drive, is too long. Employees need ways to get a system image and their data up and running within minutes.”

What should Processor readers know about your company’s products?

“We’re selling professional-grade products, tailored to people who are serious about their data—serious about making sure they still have it when something goes wrong and that it’s only available to people who should have access,” says Streuter. “We give users the ability to help themselves through the ability to create and maintain a duplicate spare drive, secure it through encryption, and use it in the event the user’s main drive has a problem. This keeps employee productivity high and also lowers IT help desk costs.”

“Our ABSplus Automatic Backup Systems, which include client backup software to create a fully bootable backup, offer mobile workers three ways to get back to work in the event of a problem,” says Streuter. “One, the drive can be used on any computer (it’s a plug-and-play USB device) so you can access your files. Two, if the notebook’s hard drive is physically still good, you can use our bootable Rescue CD to do a full bare-metal recovery. If the notebook drive has crashed, or there isn’t time to do a bare-metal restore, you can simply swap our hard drive in until you can get a replacement drive.” Also, according to Streuter, “later this year we’re adding FailSafe mode, which lets our spare system drive be booted from a USB port.”

Additionally, CMS offers its Velocity2 Redundant Backup Solution for small businesses, a portable removable-drive RAID box, as a disk-based alternative to tape. “You can replace your tape rotation with this,” Streuter says.

What makes your company unique?

“We don’t believe anybody else in the PC side is doing the FailSafe recovery mode we’re about to offer,” says Streuter. “We still suggest you take corrective action and replace the drive with a fresh one, but this lets you work meanwhile. And unlike standard cloning programs, our backup software is updating the backup on an almost real-time basis.”

Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Solutions for Priceless Documents, Photos and Music
BusinessWeek - 7/2/2007

To avoid the misery of experiencing a computer hard drive “crash,” and all of the heartache that comes with it, users should find a backup solution, use it, and rest easy knowing that they have invested in “data insurance” for their valuable, irreplaceable files.

Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Solutions for Priceless Documents, Photos and Music

BusinessWeek
7/2/2007

To avoid the misery of experiencing a computer hard drive “crash,” and all of the heartache that comes with it, users should find a backup solution, use it, and rest easy knowing that they have invested in “data insurance” for their valuable, irreplaceable files.

Computers have become a huge part of our lives. We use them at work for our important documents, while at home we store music, irreplaceable digital photos and video of our loved ones and more … all of which can be lost forever should the computer’s hard drive fail!

The most common means of preserving this valuable data is by backing up files.  However, data backup is only half the battle. Should a hard disk fail, it is the “restore” function that determines if the data actually can be recovered. This is where data backup and disaster recovery solutions become “data insurance” for computers.

Although data backup seems like a daunting task, easy-to-use software and solutions are available for both Windows and Apple operating systems.

When looking for data backup solutions, users have the option to choose a product that can be scheduled to “automatically” backup a computer – taking the guesswork out of when to backup. Solutions with a “scheduling” feature allow users to tell the computer when to back up by date and time. For optimum data safety, this automatic backup should include the backing up the computer’s operating system and all applications, as well as the data.

By creating an “identical twin” of a system drive, the restore process becomes relatively painless, even for a novice user. The ideal backup solution should make the external backup drive a “bootable” drive, which allows the computer to start up from it should the internal drive fail.

CMS Products offers a complete line of portable and desktop computer backup and disaster recovery solutions, all of which are powered by the award-winning, easy-to-use BounceBack Professional™ data backup software. For users needing additional data security such as encryption, the company offers its newest product, CE-Secure a 256-bit AES encryption scheme.

The bottom line? To avoid the misery of experiencing a computer hard drive “crash,” and all of the heartache that comes with it, users should find a backup solution, use it, and rest easy knowing that they have invested in “data insurance” for their valuable, irreplaceable files.

Backup Moves Forward
Government Computer News - 7/1/2007

Performance: A Features: A+ Ease of Use: A Value: A- Bounceback software offers a good reason to reconsider large USB drives

Backup Moves Forward

John Breeden II
Government Computer News
7/1/2007

Some things just naturally go together, like peanut butter and jelly or fish and chips. And if you are not reading this review just before lunch — when you have other priorities — you might add external portable hard drives and intelligent backup software to that list.

We have looked at portable drives from CMS Products in the past. When small external hard drives were just beginning to become popular, CMS was at the forefront.

The addition of USB 2.0 really helped this market because the faster transfer times meant that external drives could perform nearly as fast as internal drives, at least the older ones. This meant you could not only store files on the drives but also run some programs on them.

Portable hard drives lost their momentum, though, when key drives were introduced. At first, key drives could only handle small amounts of data, about 64M. But now that 2G and even larger key drives are widely available, external hard drives that are at least three times as bulky and more than twice as heavy have lost a bit of their luster.

Of course, external hard drives have much larger capacity than any key drive. The UABS model we tested could store 160G, giving it more capacity than the internal hard drives on quite a few PCs. Nevertheless, size seems to matter, at least to some people. On an older system in our lab, we have an external USB drive that we use just like a normal internal drive — but on newer systems, we simply install a new, 400G internal Serial Advanced Technology Attachment drive if things get too filled up.

What the external-drive market needed was a killer application to give the products back their mass appeal. And they found it with backup software. The UABS 160G drive comes with Bounceback Professional backup software. The complete kit sells for $349, and there is a 5 percent discount for government customers. It makes sense to add this easily portable drive that can back up your system in case of an emergency or random crash.

The BounceBack software is easy to use. You simply pop the CD into your computer and enter the serial code. Once installed, it will run Your First Backup, and you set up the program for future automatic backups. You choose the device you want to write the backup information onto — typically your CMS drive, but it doesn’t have to be.

You have three methods of backup to choose from. The first is a full system backup. This option creates a bootable backup of your entire system on the CMS drive. Should your computer ever give up the ghost — because of a power failure during the read and write process, for example — you can boot the system from your backup drive without data loss. If you choose this option, the backup device would be completely formatted, so using your new CMS drive is probably a smart move. Second, you can choose to have just the contents of the My Documents folder saved on a regular basis. This would protect files made by programs such as Word and Excel, plus digital pictures and even music files that are automatically stored in there.

Finally, you can select certain folders to back up manually. This is exactly like the My Documents option, but if you have programs that use their own file systems and folders, you can protect them, too.

Once you have chosen your backup method, the software will scan the system and backup drive, then give you an estimate of how long a backup process will take. If you are using the UABS drive with a USB 2.0 port, it probably won’t take long. A full backup of a system with a 120G internal drive took just 1 minute, 12 seconds. For smaller file transfers, it’s almost instantaneous, or at least as fast as an internal drive. Transferring a 100M file to the external drive took just 3.5 seconds. After that, you can choose how often you need to maintain your backup copy.

And for users of Apple computers, the CMS drive and the Bounceback software both work on OS X.

Installation is only slightly different, mostly because of the differences between the PC and Mac operating systems. Performance rates on our tests were identical on both system types.

Give the Gift of Storage - Portable Drives and Media Holiday Roundup
SysOpt.com - 10/28/2005

We tested it in our desktop, using a 3.5" to 2.5" drive adapter, and it worked flawlessly.

Give the Gift of Storage - Portable Drives and Media Holiday Roundup

Thomas Soderstrom
SysOpt.com
10/28/2005

The largest-capacity storage device we received, the ABSplus makes use of a Western Digital 2.5" notebook drive, and includes the full version of BounceBack Professional backup software. A very short USB cable tucks into the bottom where it can't get lost. This drive is intended for backing up a laptop, where the USB port is less than an inch from the desk -- so a longer cable isn't needed even though it might add convenience.

Though not as gorgeous as CMS' ABSmini, the ABSplus boast a huge advantage: The casing comes apart easily, so the backup drive can be removed and mounted into your notebook PC. Because BounceBack Professional allows imaging your internal drive to an external drive, your backup can be used to repair your notebook within minutes. We tested it in our desktop, using a 3.5" to 2.5" drive adapter, and it worked flawlessly.

BounceBack Professional allows synchronization of files across multiple desktops and a bevy of other features compared to BounceBack Express.

Performance testing showed the interface to be exceptional, with a full disk write averaging 17.1MB/s, and a full-disk read averaging 18.4MB/s. Sandra drive index was 21MB/s, and DiskSpeed32 tells the rest of the story.

Available in capacities from 20GB to 120GB, the 60GB ABSplus cost $229 at CMS Products Web site.

Best for:
Very large mobile multimedia presentations

CMS Products - ABSplus Automatic Backup System
Bits & Bytes Magazine - 3/1/2005

REPENT YE SINNERS! Forsake thy evil ways of want only flouting the first commandment of computing, “Thou Shalt Backup Backup!”

CMS Products - ABSplus Automatic Backup System

Louis Calden
Bits & Bytes Magazine
3/1/2005

REPENT YE SINNERS! Forsake thy evil ways of wantonly flouting the first commandment of computing, “Thou Shalt Backup Backup!”

Perhaps the evil one (no, not Bill Gates) whispered in your ear that backup is complicated and time consuming, and the restoration process is worse. If you were taken in by that rationale, sinner, here is the opportunity to repent, correct the error of your ways and maintain a current backup for judgement time when the inevitable system crash occurs.

Salvation lies with CMS Products ABSPlus (Automatic Backup System) with BounceBack Professional Software. The system comes in several versions: USB 2.0 Interface for Windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP; FireWire for Macintosh OS X and Windows 98SE/Me/200/XP and PMCIA Type II for Windows98SE?Me/NT4.0/2000/XP. I used the portable, USB 2.0 interface 40GB drive on my Athlon 2700+ machine running under Windows XP Pro. The minimum system requirements for Windows machines are: Pentium or compatible CPU, 128MB RAM, 15MB free hard drive space. For Macintosh: G4 Power PC processor; 128MB RAM and 15MB hard drive space.

The ABS system package includes: an ABS Backup unit (an external Toshiba mini-drive of various capacities. I used the smallest, 40GB.), Interface cables, BounceBack Professional software (2 CDs) and a Getting Started Guide. The guide leads you through the extremely simple setup procedures. It is really not needed. The manual is on the CD. I just plugged one end of the USB 2 cable into a port and the other into the unit. Windows recognized the drive and installed it automatically in a matter of minutes.

The BounceBack install software was on the drive so I installed it immediately with no problem. I was then given a choice of drives to use as the backup volume. Naturally I selected the ABS backup unit. My C drive was in NTFS format and was so recognized by the software which then proceeded to format the backup drive accordingly. This process took just a few minutes. My two thirds full 40GB C drive was then totally copied to the backup drive in about 1 hour. Yes, you may backup individual files/folders and restore accordingly.

One of the two supplied CDs is a recovery disk and of course is bootable. To test the restore feature, I removed the cables from my existing hard drives and put a formatted hard drive that contained no data on the IDE cable and placed the Recover CD in the CD drive. It booted and I was able to copy my C drive data from the backup unit to the new hard drive. Pretty simple; now I was really impressed. No learning curve, these things went properly the first time. That is user friendly.

The backup unit itself is also bootable. The nice part is that you no longer have to be overly concerned about malicious software ruining your computer system. Just unplug the external backup unit and the bad guys cannot get to it. The MSRP varies with the size of the backup unit; stating at 20GB for $229 ranging to 100 GB at $419; a small price to pay for ultimate salvation. These MSRPs are for the portable models, desktop are slightly different.

For additional information visit the CMS website at www.cmsproducts.com.