DataStor 50770 Shield Professional Home Data Backup Software with Deduplication - Desktop/Laptop Edition

I have to agree with another reviewer, this is kinda pointless, despite being a good collection of software for migrating your documents and such, but like most OS's, transfer software is included and its easier to use, but also its easier to use a memory stick or portable HD to transfer everything you need.

For £50+ its over priced, especially as you can get a huge memory stick or HD for less than £50, it makes this a bit pointless.

I use the dataStor Shield Professional Desktop/Laptop Edition to backup my work laptop. I work for a very small company with no IT infrastructure so it is important to archive my data via some other process. My OS is Windows XP and I backup to a USB based external hard drive. The total amount of data I backup every week is relatively small, about 7.5GB, but after nine backups the total size on disk of the backup data is only 6.4GB and the average backup time after the initial backup has been about 12 minutes.

Installation and setup was very straightforward and the user interface is simple to use. It's easy to review all previous backups by using the calendar-based tool. Archived data is displayed in familiar Windows Explorer format so any file or folder can be restored to any location on my hard drive by a simple drag and drop or cut and paste process.

I've found this product to be very reliable and actually fun to use. I highly recommend this inexpensive yet powerful product.

Like a lot of people I save an incredible amount of data (documents, photos, and music) to my computer hard drives, only backing up the files I want to save, manually, every couple of weeks. I thought that this would save me some time ... I was wrong.

The initial backing up, on to a portable hard drive was incredibly slow. I started the back up at 10 am and it was still going at midnight when I finally gave up and went to bed.

Worse was the fact that as I tried to get on with typing some documents while the program was performing the back up and discover that the time lag for typing meant that I was over 3 lines ahead of the screen display - I am a touch typist but that delay is outrageous. Document and program loading was exceedingly slow.

The next problem I noticed was involving the "de-duplication" of files. It appears that the program deleted duplicate files from my hard drive without asking.

The problem occurred with a program which converts photographs and other images into cross stitch patterns. In order to protect my existing photos I copy the required photo into a file called "pattern pictures". As the cross stitch program builds the pattern (and you make any adjustments to the image with pattern mode), it embeds the images and its location into the pattern code so that every time you load a particular pattern it immediately picks up the relevant picture and any alterations which have been made to it in order to make a cleaner clearer pattern.

Unfortunately, it appears that the Datastor program decided that these copies weren't required and deleted them. This meant that as soon as I tried to load the cross stitch of my grandfather (which I was working on) it could not find the necessary file (the scanned photography copy) and, therefore, could not reproduce the pattern. It took me nearly two full days of working on the picture to get the colour tone, lighting, clarity, highlighting and size right, and now all that time and effort has been wasted and I will have to start again. It was not the only pattern to have its embedded image copy removed and is very irritating to have all that work wiped out in a single stroke.

After this drastic discovery I started looking around at my other documents and was shocked to see that several items from the music selection and a large number of pictures had also been lost.

I tried to recover the documents from the "backup" only to discover they there were not there.

After these disasters I will stick to manually backing up my information manually and using the inbuilt windows system to back up the drive completely.

I urge anyone buying this to be incredibly careful when using it.

--- UPDATE 12 July 2010 ---

The manufacturers have contacted me and are trying to discover why this happened. I will update again when they get back to me again.

--- UPDATE 4 Aug 2010 ---

In order to discover what went wrong with the program's actions the company required me to give them remote access to my computer. This I was advised not to do, due to the personal and confidential information held on my pc. The company, however, is still looking to see if they can discover what went wrong and I am lead to believe that this may have been a fluke action.

--- Update 6 Aug 2010 ---

I picked up my emails this morning, before leaving for the hospital again, to find a rather long one from the dataStor Director (Technical Support) who requested that "in fairness to our product and our efforts to support your use of it, that you consider removing your review of the dataStor product".

It isn't that I don't appreciate their efforts (in fact I was initially impressed and happy to hear from them), nor do I think I am being unfair to their product, so I will not remove a review which may or may not point out a flaw with their software.

I realise that giving them the remote access to my computer that they requested would probably have helped them discover any possible problems. However, giving a company, or an individual, remote access to the data on my computer, especially someone I don't know from Adam, would be completely unacceptable; particularly as I am not computer savvy enough to know what they were looking at within the codes, files, etc. I only ever allow people near my computer if I have known them for several years and built up a trust with.

Mr Ortwerth also insists that their program does not delete files, and I wish to point out that dataStor has NEVER acknowledged that their program may be at fault, NOR have I ever stated such at anytime in my review or in the updates.

I have also had the hard drive checked and there are NO areas of corruption on this NEW computer as was suggested.

Any conclusions in this review are mine; made from the evidence in front of me. The fact is I used the cross-stitch software with no problems the night before I used the dataStor program; but the day after using the dataStor program I received a `file not found' message. It was then I started looking at the folders and found that the copy of the image that was linked to the cross stitch was missing along with a number of other embedded images, music tracks and photographs - it would have been devastating if most of my photos hadn't already been backed up to disc; and since the dataStor program was the only thing that was different in those 3 days the only conclusion I could come to was that it must be something to do with the dataStor program. I have been given no information to the contrary so cannot change my opinion yet. dataStor was the only difference.

I did ask if it could have been caused by a problem between my security software and the dataStor program, but received no answer to my question.

I had also given dataStor the benefit of the doubt by saying it was probably a fluke occurrence.

I have always reviewed honestly. If I like a product I say so and if I have problems with something I will say that too. Furthermore, I have only ever reviewed items I own or have direct access to. I call it as I see it and I understand that this can be frustrating to some people (mainly authors and manufacturers). Simply put I found a problem after using this software that I did not have before using it, and I stated so, this problem (the deletion of files) has not been explained, as of yet. So my review stays.

It has always been my understanding that reviewers here at Amazon are NOT required to give glowing 5 star reviews to every product - and it is definitely not in the Amazon Vine rules. Amazon simply requires that we review honestly, to the best of our ability and in a manner that would help inform other customers.

I had an unexplained problem after using this dataStor software and have no choice but to say so. I am sorry of this upsets the people at dataStor but I will not delete this review.

Finally, once again, I would like to point out that dataStor has never admitted their program was at fault and that their Director (Technical Support) states that their software does not delete files. The opinions within this review are mine, and I will not delete them or be forced to become a corporate shill.