Posts Tagged ‘Backup Software’

Commercial Software That Allows You to Easily Backup Your Dvds

Friday, June 12th, 2009

James Fohl is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the popular Amazon S3 based online backup service — Back2zip. This article available at http://free-backup.info/commercial-software-allows-easily-backup-dvds.html

Commercial Software That Allows You to Easily Backup Your Dvds

Have you ever thought about your DVDs, and wished there was a simple way to make backup copies of them? Let’s face it, DVDs aren’t cheap. Another piece of common knowledge that you can throw in to that mix is that DVDs aren’t durable. You may have just spent a hundred dollars on the complete first season of your favorite TV show only to find the discs unreadable because your kids gained control of the discs.

If you have young children in your household, you really have to start considering what options exist in allowing you to make backups of your DVDs.

A DVD’s worst nightmare is the dirty hands of a seven year old child. The child will get dirt all over the disc, scratches on the disc from rough handling, and if the disc is still readable after that, then you’ll probably soon see the DVD flying through the air as if it was a Frisbee.

Because of this great limitation to the wonderful DVD format, it makes perfect sense for any family with small children to consider making backup copies of your purchased DVDs.

Thankfully several software companies have seen the need for software that allows users to easily make backup copies of their DVDs, and now such software is readily available both on the internet and at your local software store.

1CLICK DVD Copy is one of the greatest pieces of DVD backup software there is available. With one click, the software will quickly make a backup copy of any DVD movie. The publisher of this software states that you can easily have a backup copy burned within fifteen minutes!

DVD Wizard Pro is another excellent piece of DVD backup software. While it does not offer all of the advanced capabilities of 1CLICK DVD, it is cheaper and offers other abilities to the user such as the ability to easily create backup copies of your Playstation 2 and XBOX video games.

Cosmi DVD Ripper is a value priced piece of computer software that allows users to easily create backup copies of their DVDs. Priced at under ten dollars, Cosmi is not without its own set of problems. If your DVD movie is longer than a hundred minutes, then you’ll have to find another piece of software; Cosmi for some reason is only capable of copying the first hundred minutes.

After recommending a couple software titles, this list would not be complete if it did not list any worthless pieces of DVD backup software.

Roxio Easy DVD Copy is one product that’s hard to recommend. While the product’s box promptly displays ‘Copy Hollywood DVDS’ this is simply not the case. Roxio Easy DVD Copy will only copy unprotected media, which is very unfortunate considering the fact that ninety nine percent of commercial DVDs are encoded with copy protection. Roxio believes that after creating trust with millions of computer users, they can pull a fast one. Roxio Easy DVD Copy is simply a horrible product, and especially with its retail price of fifty dollars.

Commercial software is not your only option for making backup copies of your DVDs; several free pieces of software are out there waiting to be utilized.

Besides commercial software, a lot of free applications exist on the internet that allow you to backup your DVDs. Unfortunately, these pieces of software are not exactly the easiest things to use, but if you wish to save some money and just spend your time learning how to use the free software, in the end it’s your best choice.

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Computer Backups – Is Yours Doing What it is Supposed to Do?

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

So you have your computer and you have your backup software installed but are you backing up your data? Are you sure? How do you really know?

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Keep Your Games Alive: Ps2 Backup

Monday, May 25th, 2009

Walter Stevens is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the popular Amazon S3 based Online Backup software — Back2zip. This resources is also available at http://free-backup.info/keep-your-games-alive-ps2-backup.html

The Importance of PS2 Backup

Ps2 backup is an important thing. The prices of games are high, 40, 60 even 80 dollars for a single video game. And we all know how easy it is to damage a video game so that it is no longer playable. No one wants to have to spend another 80 dollars in order to purchase a video game that they already own. Thus, if you backup your PS2 games you can ensure that you will always have a copy of your PS2 games, even if they are badly scratched, warped, or whatever other damage may befall them.

You can even keep your original copy in reserve and play only on your backups, this will keep the original safe from harm’s way.

How to Backup Your PS2 Games

In order to backup your PS2 games, you will need either a CD or DVD burner. While it is possible to backup your games onto a CD-R, this process requires extreme compression of the game files and is not the safest way to backup your PS2 games. It is a difficult process, and might be difficult to make work for your backup needs, although this method is less expensive. If you have a DVD burner, however, it is far easier to backup your PS2 games onto a DVD-R, as PS2 games themselves are written on DVDs.

You will also require special software in order to burn your PS2 games, however, as PS2 is a slightly different format than a normal DVD. One excellent program is DVD Wizard Pro, which has a special feature included that allows you to burn your PS2 games. The actual process is very simple once you have the required program, as you simply need to write the data from your PS2 onto a DVD burner.

Mod Chips and PS2 Backup

In order to play your backup games on your PS2 machine, however, you will require the use of what is called a mod chip. This is a special chip that you must actually install onto your PS2 console. In order to protect against piracy, manufacturers of the PS2 have put special encoding into the PS2 to protect against what is seen as illegal games so that they cannot be played on your PS2 machine.

However, this program goes cannot distinguish between an illegal copy and your own legal backup of your PS2 game. In order to circumvent this, you must install a mod chip onto your machine. Mod chips are available online, costing between 20 and 30 dollars, and you can install it onto your machine yourself. Once you do this, you will be able to play your backup games with ease.

The process is somewhat complicated, though, and you will want to make sure that you know what you are doing before you install your chip, as you do not want to damage your machine and make it inoperable at all. Your mod chip will come with installation instructions, and there are also web sites online which can assist you in this matter.

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How to Upgrade Your Backup Software

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

Andrew Whitehead is a contributor at Free-backup.info — the home of the popular Amazon S3 based tool for online remote backup — Back2zip. This article can be found at http://free-backup.info/how-to-upgrade-your-backup-software.html

Have a Plan for Your Backup Software

Before doing anything else, have a plan of what you expect your new backup software to do for you. To do this, you will need to find out which of your other existing software applications is generating the largest backups, and how your backup windows -the time taken to actually perform a backup- are planned too minimize inconvenience to system users.

Once you have done that, the second part of this plan is to make your best estimates of how your backup needs will grow, and plan a practical way to monitor these needs. Thirdly, and most important, make a thorough evaluation of your existing backup system – both hardware and software- to reveal how it can integrate with any planned upgrades. Knowing this will place you in a better position to when you start to evaluate commercial products.

Ensure Your Backup Software is Appropriate

Make sure that your backup software package is matched to your operations, it is very easy to to pay too much for money for the wrong backup software that doesn’t do the job you want it for. Data centers, PC LANs, telecommuters, and remote offices all generate different amounts of data, in different ways, and in turn have different backup software needs. It is tempting, and occasionally possible, to try and standardize on one vendor’s backup software. Avoid putting too much emphasis on this.

The main priority should be to “tier” your backup strategies based on your corporate requirements, though it might make sense to cut down to one backup software vendor within each tier. You may also find yourself tempted to unload the whole problem by hiring a professional service to come in and make sure your backup operations are running well.

Don’t rush into this, it is unlikely that you will realize any return on investment by doing this, even in the in the long run, unless these people are also going to train your staff how to improve backups. They are unlikely to agree to this as it is not in there interests, so it is more probable that you will be creating a new dependency on a third-party when your own team should really be able to do it.

Plan Ahead for You Backup Software Needs

Look as far ahead as you can at developing technologies likely to become available, and consider how they could be deployed in your environment. One fundamental but rapidly developing technology is the ever growing number of backup monitoring tools. The latest generation of these tools can provide very useful reports on whether or not your backups have been completed, and they also provide an analysis report of why failed backups didn’t complete.

There are other versatile software packages, such as continuous backups that eliminate backup windows, that you should also considered in terms of future deployment.

You should test, test, and test again before rolling out any backup software upgrades. Finally, a good time to upgrade you backup software is when you upgrade your servers.

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