Data protection, backup and disaster recovery specialist Paragon Software Group announced the release of Boot Camp Backup, a free OS X-based backup solution for Windows partitions on Mac computers.
The platform backs up NTFS Boot Camp partitions at the sector level and creates incremental chains, where each new increment describes the changes between the current state of the backup object and the previous state.
Features include sector-level backup to create complete file system backups including partition parameters and backup to VD to store data in a virtual disk.
Users can mount this disk and access the partition data as it was at the point in time when a particular backup was made, which makes it easier to recover individual files or folders.
“We’re releasing this as a free product to complete our Mac OS X Boot Camp portfolio, which consists of platform interoperability solutions like NTFS for Mac and HFS+ for Windows—file system drivers that enable you to work with both file systems that are present on a Boot Camp configuration—and the Boot Camp partitioning solution Camptune,” Konstantin Komarov, CEO of PSG, told eWEEK. “It’s free at the moment but can likely to get incorporated by our commercial boot camp solutions later.”
Incremental imaging only backs up changed sectors, improving backup efficiency and reducing the disk space required by the image, and there’s a schedule backup feature to automate regular backup operations.
“Unfortunately, still a significant number of SMBs [small and midsize businesses] don’t realize how important it is to have a secure and efficient backup and recovery system in place,” Komarov said. “Data backup is of a very high importance for today’s businesses because data is the most important asset for businesses. Additionally, you can’t run most businesses without a PC, even if it only involves writing invoices or orders. Even more important is the customer data.”
Losing customer data will stop most business activity immediately and reflect badly on the business’s reputation, according to Komarov.
Another feature is pinned archive state, which allows users to pin the archive or increment state and be sure that they can always go back to it.
This archive will never be changed or merged automatically by Boot Camp Backup’s ability to automatically merge the oldest increment with its original archive to save space when the number of increments exceeds a user-specified limit.
“Backup software in the future will become more and more a cloud-based service. However, for sensitive personal or enterprise data, the cloud is not the best place to store data,” Komarov said. “We’re therefore developing easy-to-use solutions that handle both cloud as well as physical stored backups, where the user is able to choose which part of his backup data will be in the cloud and which will not.”
Komarov also noted that corporate and home segments have bit different trends, as home users want easy-to-use tools that do the job for them.
“They don’t want to think about complicated backup schemas or install complex software, while corporate users do care about privacy a lot,” he said. “They need minimal RTO [recovery time objective] and RPO [recovery point objective], which is not OK in comparison with locally stored backups. So they want more control, and much better performance.”