Let a friend be your backup partner

It’s not “if” your hard drive will fail, it’s “when.” I’ve been saying it for years and will continue to do so. Sooner or later, something bad will happen and you could lose some or all of your data. So ask yourself right now how bad it would be to lose everything you’ve worked so hard to create such as your letters, e-mails, financial data, digital pictures, etc. If it were all to disappear right now, how would you feel? If there’s nothing of importance to you on your PC, then you probably just use it to play games and surf the Internet. But for most of us, losing our computer’s data could be a total nightmare.

Over the years, I’ve written about countless software and hardware products that backup your data and still there’s always a new wrinkle that crops up in the backup arena. The idea of offsite backups isn’t a new one. There are dozens of services that will do it for you, offering special software that connects to their remote servers and copies everything for safe keeping. The key idea behind offsite backup is that if your computer is stolen, destroyed in a fire or a natural disaster wipes out everything, having it all securely backed up somewhere else could be a godsend. One of the newest ideas to surface in offsite backups is Cucku. The name wasn’t chosen because the idea is a crazy one but rather emulates a more inventive characteristic of the cuckoo bird.

I didn’t know this but evidently the cuckoo puts its precious eggs in another bird’s nest. I’m not sure whether that’s because it doesn’t know how to make one or it’s too lazy to build one on its own. Perhaps it’s just their way of not dealing with teenagers. But whatever the case, the idea behind Cucku is that you entrust your data to a friend.

After installing Cucku on your computer, it first makes a complete local backup of all your data. As a default, it automatically determines what needs to be backed up, including the obvious things such as e-mail and bookmarks. It also does a good job in determining the not so obvious and backs them up as well. Unlike some backup software, it can back up files that are locked and open such as Outlook’s e-mail files. This data can be stored on any type of storage device such as an external hard drive. But that’s where the similarities end. After the local backup, it then compresses and creates an encrypted copy of that data, sending it off for storage and safe keeping on someone’s computer whom you’ve designated to be your backup partner. The compression also keeps things to a manageable size so you don’t take up too much of their storage space.

While you are entrusting your data to your trusted partner, they still won’t be able to access any of your data. In fact, they can’t even see the file names. The big difference here with Cucku as opposed to offsite services is that there’s no central server. Cucku warns that offsite services might get hacked or damaged but I must point out that most all of these offsite services have so many redundant backups in multiple locations, the likelihood of that happening is truly remote.

Still the concept here is a novel one. You’re entrusting a close friend to keep your stuff which is completely secure from any access attempts on their part. And of course, you could eliminate the trusted friend altogether and just use Cucku to backup your data from your home computer to your office PC, for example. So why would you choose to do an offsite backup this way? Well for one thing, it’s free. And secondly, you know who’s got your back or more accurately, your backup. It’s not off in the Internet cloud somewhere. It’s a novel concept and given the cost, it’s definitely worth a try.

Other important points to know about Cucku are that it continuously and automatically keeps backing up your hard drives when you aren’t using your computer. The backups are incremental, which means that after the initial backup, Cucku will only backup the things that change. This keeps backup times to a minimum and also keeps your backup data synchronized with your backup partner’s copy.

As with anything new, the Cucku folks have coined a new phrase that describes their process and I like it. They call it making a “Social Backup” and while I’m sure it’s not for everyone, what is? If you’re looking for a process that backs up your stuff both locally and off site and do it all for free, then give it a try. It’s a novel idea that doesn’t sound Cuckoo to me.

For more information, go to www.cucku.com.

XCraig Crossman is a national newspaper columnist writing about computers and technology. For more information, visit his Web site at www.computeramerica.com.

2008 McClatchy Tribune