Portable Backup Solution - CMS Products
 

I'd been looking for a while for a device I could deploy to my users (small company and 99% of us are remote and all travel, 50% travel extensively). Anyway, found a device that I put through the paces and have had the unfortunate experience of having to use myself. Device is ABSplus for Notebook Backup by CMS Products.
The short skinny - the software creates a bootable image of your hard drive on an external drive. The internal drive needs to be equal to or smaller than the backup drive.
Restore options:
1. Device acts as an external drive allowing you access to files if needed so you can borrow a client/co-worker laptop to get to your power point.
2. Go buy a hard drive (equal in size to the device or equal to what you presently have). Boot to the recovery CD that you have with you ;). Personal experience had me up and running within an hour once I had a replacement hard drive. ^
3. Last option (I travel to Africa regularly and the corner computer store is not that easy to find) get a screwdriver and open the external enclosure and swap the drives. A couple reboots and you're back up and running.

CMS Products did allow me to have a demo unit for up to 90 days while I put the device through the paces. The initial unit I did break when I was pulling the drive out and they did an advance replacement (e.g. I prepaid for another, refunded when they got the broken drive back) which I had in 48 hours.
Losing data on the road is always a fear. Another thought, keep the backup drive separate from your laptop bag in case someone walks off with your laptop.
Unit I have (currently backup up) is 160GB SATA and cost me @ $225.

Interesting product. How long does the backup process take to run? Is it scheduled or just running in the background while the drive is connected? How do you make your users plud it in to ensure they actually get a backup every now and then?

Yeah, #3 is harder to answer than the other 2 ;)

1. The initial backup does take a bit - 60 minutes if I recall correctly? Subsequent backups are incrementals and don't take that long, but I've never sat and timed one.
2. I've got mine configured - default - to kick off the backup once the device is plugged in. I spend a ton of time in a hotel room and I've gotten in the habit of plugging it in to backup right before I go to bed.
3. I can't, no one can. It's beat into the users heads to backup but users are users no matter where you go. They don't do what they're always told ;)

Something that I thought of from my personal recovery a couple weeks ago. It did not keep my Adobe (Acrobat & Photoshop) licenses. Just had to re-register and all was good.

I've been using a CMS drive for about a year and have been very happy with it. Swapped the drive with my internal one just as a test and it worked as advertised. Backups after the initial one don't take very long. I'm also planning to deploy these for my users who travel. It'll be up to them to run the backup every once in a while.

Backup last night took 32 minutes.