Clickfree Transformer Cable gives any USB hard drive auto backup functionality
By Darren Murph 
posted January 5th 2009 6:00AM
posted January 5th 2009 6:00AM
New 'Transformer Cable' from Clickfree is the first and only USB cable that turns ordinary external hard drives into truly automatic Clickfree backup solutions
Storage Appliance Corp.'s latest breakthrough turns any external hard drive from any manufacturer into an effortless, Clickfree backup solution, eliminating the risk of losing precious photos, videos, music and data forever
TORONTO – Jan. 5, 2008 – Storage Appliance Corp. – the company whose portable backup systems made the otherwise laborious task of backing up computer data manually a thing of the past – today announced another breakthrough with the launch of its Clickfree Transformer Cable. The new Transformer USB cable instantly turns any competitor's external hard drive into a Clickfree automatic backup device, completely eliminating the hassle and confusion of installing and configuring backup software. Like all Clickfree products there is no software to install or configure, it is truly automatic - right out of the box.
"The Clickfree name has become synonymous with effort-free computer backup. Regardless of what the competition claims, our new Clickfree Transformer Cable is the only way to make a regular external hard drive easy to use, requiring no software or configuration, and immediately backing up everything that matters from your computer's hard drive," says Storage Appliance Corp. CEO, Bryan McLeod. "The Transformer Cable works with any manufacturer's USB external hard drive to deliver automatic, no-click backing up. Finally, you can stop avoiding backup because it was too much trouble!"
The Transformer USB cable is so easy to use. Simply plug it in to your computer, then connect the other manufacturer's hard drive and it instantly becomes a totally automatic Clickfree backup drive that searches, organizes and backs up all of your PC data and digital files. There are no instructions to read, no software to install and configure, no copying and pasting files, it's really that easy.
Clickfree's entire lineup of products, from the Transformer Cable to Clickfree portable backup drives and DVDs, are designed for the 85 to 95 percent of computer users who, research shows, fail to regularly backup content on their PCs because they do not have the time, desire or skill to install, set up and use confusing or complex software and hardware products.
The Cable Backup has a retail price of $59.99 and will be available starting January 1, 2009 by ordering directly from the Storage Appliance Corporation's website (www.goclickfree.com) and other retailers.
Clickfree products can also be found at leading outlets such as Best Buy, FRYS, OfficeMax, and Walgreens, in addition to Amazon.com, Costco.com, Newegg.com, and Walmart.com, with additional major retailers coming soon.
Everyone knows the average user doesn't care about backing up data , until they lose it, then it's too late...
I use Norton Ghost and back up to an external hard-drive:
1 full backup every week and incremental's everyday on my critical files.
I used to use Acronis Home, but it kept giving me trouble and didn't want to backup my data when scheduled...
Too many people on the message boards spend a lot of time searching for most value to build a new computer, but fail to address how they will backup data. Worse yet, they rely only on a RAID solution, which is a bad idea...
I've never really seen the point of automatic backups. I know where my important stuff is and I back it up fairly regularly on my own. That's been working for me for the past 15 years just fine.
What chefgon_ign said.
The key is to not do stupid things.
chefgon_ign & superhobo - Do you know any non-Engadget readers who would actually remember to run a manual backup? Automatic backups are great, I have other things to worry about and remember to do. Besides, what's the disadvantage to automatic backups?
"without any software installations" - how's that possible? nothing gets installed, but some 'autorun' exe kicks off?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_(paranormal)
my thought exactly... are they saying all OSes have a backdoor which allows a USB device to freely access I/O?
Doesn't sound like a secure method does it? Perhaps you actually plug it in, turn on your machine, and boot from that device instead, which has some sort of OS (most likely Linux-based) that will scan for other drives on the computer and back them up to the drive that's directly connected to it.
Its a nice idea, but i honesly dont see a vast amount of people going for it. Mainly as the price is quite high. But can you put a price on piece of mind?
I wouldn't have thought so either, but here we are.
So basically, wherever I go I can plug this in and it'll automagically copy all the private data/passwords into a potable device ? Cool !
Great for data theft, plug it in, come back in a few hours and pick up the goodie
inb4you'reanapplefanboy
Anyways, I use Time Machine for Mac OS X, and it has done a great job. I don't back up my Windows partition though... I haven't found any software that backs up any recently modified files or such every hour like Time Machine has. Granted, I didn't look very well, and I don't have critical files on Windows, but still...
If anyone knows, reply to this comment... please...
I use GoodSync, it syncs and backs up folder. I find it very useful and fast at backing up files...
I use Time Machine on my Mac and manually backup my linux box. But something like this would be perfect for my Dad if it was like Time Machine for Windows. But I am wondering if it just backs up the files, or if you could restore the drive as it was some time ago.
It does launch an application when you plug it in. As far as Windows is concerned, it's a storage device in itself and automatically runs the application.
Of course, this assumes you have AutoRun enabled...
That actually seems like a nifty little device, and rather useful - at least for people who like to put out a few extra buys for convenience or so as not to have to think about it (or especially for people who don't even know how to back up - and thus those who need this type of thing even more)
I would imagine what the folks above me have said is all true; it probably uses in-built organization functions (like AutoRun) to "search through, organize, and back up" the data. Otherwise I would be worried about why a piece of hardware is allowed to decide what I want and don't want to back up. Seriously, like the other folks said: every one of us knows the perils of having only one copy of any current document or image; every one of us knows how to copy whole directories to off-system backups (be they servers or flash drives or just other hard disks).
This thing reminds me of that T-shirt: "go away or i will replace you with a very small shell script."
to the dude way above, what are you telling me Raid is bad? Seriously Im hazy around this area, I want to build a server one day and was thinking of Raid , i think its Raid 0 to make a complete copy of one drive incase it failed. Bad idea?
@FILA - RAID is great for redundancy and high-availability. RAID is NOT a backup strategy. You need a backup (preferably an off-site backup) of your data regardless of what disk configuration you use.
Also, RAID 0 is striping, It improves performance but offers no data protection at all. What you want is RAID 1, mirroring.
backup strategy, like a software one. See now ima get all confused. liek i need to build a server sometime probably within a year. i want to have atleast 3TB and its all going to be movies, but i want a back up of them to, which means i would need 3 more TB's of just back up harddrives. so your telling me raid 1 isnt a good idea for that? i would run the server on linux i guess, i know theres a couple free NAS programs out there, but what is the right way to do this.
@FILA - RAID 1 will make a duplicate copy of all the data on a second drive. It is specifically meant to protect against the failure of a drive. If one drive fails the machine reads the data from the second drive until you replace the first one. It will NOT protect against the machine being stolen, damaged in a fire, multiple drive failures, user error or anything other than hard drive failure.
So what happens after you load up all your data and your machine suffers a power spike, and 2 of your drives are lost? That is why you need a backup that is located outside of the system, and preferably off-site. When you are dealing with that much data, it does become a serious problem. Depends on how valuable the data is and how difficult it would be to recreate.
That is why I said RAID is not a backup strategy. A backup is a separate independent copy of the data stored away from the original copy. If the only copy of your data is on a RAID array, you are still vulnerable to data loss and need a backup.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID
What I don't like about this is that it is not automatic. You can't leave it plugged in and tell it (like I do with my Maxstor backup drive) to copy selected folders from my internal drive at 1:00 a.m. every morning. You must plug in the USB cable to activate a backup. The available "reminder" app is a weak attempt to overcome its inability to perform scheduled backups.
Question: Does this ClickFree divice copy "all" files off your hard drive-----or some? I have genealogy software and tax software that are very inportant to me. But, will the ClickFree auto backup divice recognize these files or file extensions? Does it also backup program files?