While a flash drive might not be your first choice as a backup solution, Corsair thinks that the current trend of high-capacity high-speed pendrives might just be suitable – and has come up with a neat new product to help things along.
Dubbed the Voyager Port – and clearly styled after the company's top-end line of USB flash storage devices – the cradle converts a USB flash drive from any manufacturer into a one-touch backup system.
Shipped with a copy of NovaBACKUP 10 – for Windows only, sadly – the Voyager Port has just a single button which instantly triggers a backup of your chosen data. Jim Carlton, VP of marketing at Corsair, believes that the limited – but growing – capacity of solid-state flash drives is more than enough to keep the important things safe. “[i]Our research indicated that over 80 percent of users have a 'My Documents' folder of less than 64GB, and more than 85 percent need to regularly transport less than 64GB of data between different PCs.”
With 64GB pendrives now costing somewhat less than a second mortgage – and ever larger units doubtless on the horizon – it's a neat idea, but one which can be achieved purely via software using free utilities like Microsoft's
SyncToy package. That said, the simpler a backup solution is, the more likely it is to actually be done – and anything which means you're more likely to take regular backups is to be applauded.
Whether you think that there's room on your desk for what basically boils down to a smart-looking USB extension cable with a button on it along with some backup software, making frequent backups of your most important data is certainly something to think about.
Tempted by a simplified solution for backing up your critical data, or is a pendrive just not big enough for serious backup storage? Share your thoughts over in
the forums.
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