Five years have passed since Hurricane Katrina, one of the most deadly and costly hurricanes on record, devastated the Gulf Coast. While the Gulf Coast is still recovering from the damage caused by the 2005 hurricane season, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center is warning of a 2010 hurricane season eerily similar to 2005. Citing all-time high sea surface temperatures in key areas of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as the El Niño cycle, NOAA predicts that the 2010 season will most likely produce 14 to 23 named storms, eight to 14 hurricanes and three to seven major hurricanes (Category 3 or stronger).

Faced with this alarming forecast and with Hurricane Earl gaining strength off of the Eastern Seaboard, many state and local agencies are investigating what they can do to keep operations up and running during a major disruption such as a hurricane. Although most agencies are aware that a disaster preparedness plan is important, many key components are often either overlooked or not fully tested. Developing a solid and proven disaster preparedness plan is crucial to ensuring minimal interruptions to critical operations during weather emergencies or other disruptions. The following business continuity checklist can help state and local agencies take the first steps to avoid costly downtime, reduce inconvenience to constituents, and prevent disruption of critical services provided by the organization to the public:

Learn More…

SmartSync Pro is full-featured backup software which is quite easy to use. It is developed to backup and synchronize sensible data to the local drive, external drive, network volumes or remote computer. Step-by-step wizard can help you very much to set up backup profiles and other settings necessary. Configuration of files and directories to backup, destination of reserve copy and backup schedule can be made once, and then tasks will execute the backup job automatically by the schedule.

SmartSync Pro offers an interesting feature. It gives an ability to synchronize data between remote PCs which cannot be connected in local network and then move compressed data to remote computer through removable drive, email or FTP.

Backup to FTP software offers filtering system of high flexibility and advanced scheduler. Additionally, take benefits of email notifications of backup events and the fact that software runs as a Windows 2000/XP/Vista service. Program interface is translated to many languages including Spanish, French, German and Chinese.

SyncPro Backup provides very well balanced options of zip backup and data syncing. The application works across multiple types of backup storage media: Zip disks, floppy disks, CD-R/W, LS, Jaz and etc… SyncPro Backup also provides backup over networked peer computers, and also from the server.

It goes without saying that SyncPro Backup supports such trivial backup tasks as backing up several hard drive disks on the same PC or two partitions on the same disk. This backup application also boasts somewhat obsolete backup methods as, for example, data synching or backup between PCs via a serial or parallel infrared connection. Backup over the Internet connection is supported of course. The program provides incremental backup, i.e. when only modified files are backed up while unchanged files are left intact. This essentially decreases data traffic spendings, especially when zip backup takes place via the Internet.

This rich functionality provided by SyncPro Backup allows its users to backup files and folders or synchronize them effortlessly across their work, home PCs, laptops or netbooks. Thus they have instant easy access to their information stored in a zip backup on any computer.

However, there are some disadvantages if you want to use the program to back up to CD. Easy Burning wasn’t designed for backup purposes and doesn’t allow automatically finding backup sources like e-mail messages, Windows Registry or ICQ history. But if you purpose is to back up things like photos and documents once in a while, Easy Burning will meet your requirements and become an efficient and freeware backup to CD solution.

Backup Plus DVD Edition can use system registry and automatically find frequently used system folders, giving you a possibility to back up My Documents, Desktop or Internet Cookies folders with a single click. Other backup features are e-mail backup reports, easy checking of created reserve copies for usability and backup tracking. If something happens and your computer crashes or you just lose some of your data, you will use Windows Explorer interface to restore your information with a Restore Manager.

However, there are some points that we didn’t like about the program. The main is the absence of spanning disks support, which limits the capacity of single backup job to just around 4GB. This problem can be overcome by creating multiple tasks, but there is a group of users who certainly won’t like this additional job. But for most of us it’s still OK and Backup Plus DVD Edition offers a good value for money if you need to backup files to DVD.

It’s very clear how backup can help an average user: it doesn’t let your data be wasted in case of hardware and software failures. You also can guarantee the safety of your data in case of the whole hard drive data loss if you use backup methods with external storage media, for example backup to CD. With the use of Backup4Sure Standard you can backup data to CD and save yourself from unpredictable circumstances. The program can perform local and networked files and folders backup with or without ZIP-compression, which can distinctly save your storage space. The scheduler lets you set up automatic process that doesn’t require your intervention. The program uses the integrated burner for backup to CD and supports spanning disks to let you back up files of a large size.

However, the program lacks quite useful functions like automatic backup of ICQ files, automatic backup of Microsoft Outlook; it doesn’t support backup of the email from the server, etc. The program also doesn’t offer backup to remote locations. Backup4Sure Standard can be useful if you want to backup files to CD automatically or manually and don’t need a wide list of backup sources and destinations.

AISBackup performs data backup and restoration which can be done with local and networked files, with Windows registry, with NTFS File and Folder Security Settings, with Microsoft Exchange Server, with encrypted files, with Active Directory and with some other sources. The program also can back up and restore Windows to new partitions and drives. With the use of AISBackup you can backup data to DVD which is more secure than storing your data on a local hard drive. In addition, it’s also possible to backup to network folders, to removable media and to FTP servers. Backup to DVD is done with the integrated burner or with the use of a third party packet writing interface like CeQuadrat PacketCD, Adaptec DirectCD, Nero InCD, etc.

The negative side of the program is not very user-friendly interface with a lot of terms that are unknown for even advanced computer users. For example, there are terms backup and backup job which have completely different meanings – backup means backup copy itself and backup job means backup task and source files. However, this disadvantage can be unimportant for many potential customers as the program has quite low price in comparison to other backup software with backup to DVD feature. The program will do the best if you need to backup files to DVD, but don’t won’t to pay for quick setup and for very wide list of options and features.