Now, I am also not in the business of giving testimonials (quotes yes, testimonials no), but I feel that my own experience can provide insight as to the value of snapshot technology at the desktop level. And the first thing that happened is that, within a couple of weeks of installing Rollback Rx, my Outlook PST file went away (size 0 bytes). That was before I had Internet backup, and I wasn’t too sure about my local backup. Fortunately, I was able to restore to an automatic Rollback Rx snapshot.
Horizon DataSys saved my bacon on a number of other occasions with my old system, as well.
So when I moved to a new PC last year and went with all the new Microsoft products, including Office 2010, Horizon DataSys kindly provided me with another complimentary copy of Rollback Rx. I didn’t think that I would need it, but I wasn’t taking any chances. And, again, I am glad that I did. As a user, I am not happy about not being in total control of what can be done on my computer without my express permission. One night, I left my computer on to perform a large number of automatic updates, but in the morning my computer seemed to be hung and turned out not to be usable. Restoring to a Rollback Rx snapshot restored my computer (and my sanity).
Given the growing amount of malware lurking online, one also has to be cautious when retrieving information. A company I trusted gave me links to a site with some files that they thought I could use. I did, and somehow the site altered my PC in ways that I had not authorized. I felt that my PC was becoming a zombie, and I was really happy when I was able to restore my system to normalcy with a Rollback Rx snapshot. My Internet backup and my local backup would not have been able to do that easily, if at all.
So even with a new system, Rollback Rx has proved valuable.
Now, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), if it ever becomes widely adopted, could replace the need for individual data protection of desktops and laptops (as IT would provide data protection as a service). Until then, businesses are going to need to make sure that personal computing devices are protected. Backup is the standard approach, but that tends to focus more on physical data protection rather than logical data protection.
Snapshots are one good, proven way of protecting logical data, and numerous vendors, including Microsoft, provide some recovery capabilities for desktops and laptops. I am personally familiar with Rollback Rx and have used it for some time. The bottom line of my own experience is that snapshots (or something similar) should be in the data protection arsenal of every PC user, along with backup software. For me, Horizon DataSys’s Rollback Rx provides exactly the sort of protection I need.
Except for providing me a complimentary copy of Rollback Rx, Horizon DataSys has not been and is not currently a client of David Hill and the Mesabi Group.
