HI, we need a commerical product back up program eg, Symantec,
PCTools or whatever, that's a good back up program that'll 128bit
encrypt and password protect daily backups of an Access database.
Daily backups are around 330MB and weekly back ups are about one
gigabyte.
And since when has PC Tools (the company, not the ancient utility that
Symantec bought and buried but which didn't have a backup program,
either) had any backup program? Obviously you haven't even bothered
to do your own research and are naming companies that you've heard of
but don't have a clue as to what products they actually have. Show me
at
www.pctools.com where they list a backup program.
Symantec (via Veritas that they acquired) has an enterprise-level
backup program called NetBackup. Are you asking about a corporate or
enterprise-level backup program? It is an excellent corporate backup
program but far beyond the needs of just backing up an Access
database.
Ever heard of Novastor? They've been making backup software for eons,
like NovaBackup. Stompsoft (now Migo Software) rebadges it under the
"PC Backup" product name. If you don't run Windows Vista (you never
mention WHICH operating system and version so we have to guess it is
some version of Windows based on your undetailed post) then you don't
need version 8 and 7.5 should do very nicely. I got it for $4 in a
Stompsoft bundle labeled HP Data Security Suite (PC Backup is good,
Recover Lost Data is okay, but Digital Vault is crap and I use Heidi's
Eraser rather than Digital File Shredder); see
http://preview.tinyurl.com/2kal8y. The seller was unresponsive to
e-mail inquiries but they did ship fast (after shipping on the 3rd day
after auction close).
Don't bother trying to use Acronis TrueImage Home for logical file
backups. It doesn't support volume shadow copying (very important for
database backups) and they will hang the backup on a file read error
(rather than skipping and reporting in the log) which means scheduled
backups won't complete without user interaction. They promise that
their twice more expensive Workstation version supports volume shadow
copying (don't know what they do when a file read error occurs,
however).
If compression is not an issue, why not just use the NT Backup program
already included in Windows (NT-based versions)? It supports volume
shadow copying, skips on file read errors (to report in the log), and
can save to a disk file (you never mention what target media of where
to save the backups). It won't support spanning of backup files
except to tape (so you can't span multiple CD/DVD discs but it doesn't
support that media type, anyway). The backup will only be compressed
if the hardware itself supports compression, like for tape drives. It
has no software compression so the backup is as large as the original
files (but without the loss due to slack space from unused sectors in
a cluster). NT Backup is a crippled version of Veritas' old Backup
Exec Desktop product which they sold off to Stompsoft who sold it off
to Ahead (Nero) and Stompsoft switched to a rebadged copy of
NovaBackup.
For a "personal" backup product, not sure you'll find anything better
than PC Backup (aka NovaBackup). Unlike the corporate backup
products, it doesn't include cataloging (so you can search by file
instead of digging through backups, specify which media is off-site,
and expire old media/backups) but then the "personal" products don't
have the advanced features of enterprise-level backup products. If
all you are doing is saving some Access database that only you are
using or even if it is shared then NT Backup is already included in
NT-based versions of Windows (but no compression unless you save to
tape).
Neither PC Backup or NT Backup have an option to encrypt the backup
file with a password. So what? That doesn't stop you from using EFS
or TrueCrypt. If you use EFS, be sure to export the EFS certificate
and lock it up, to designate an alternate recovery agent, or both.
You are expected to protect your own backup files either physically
(locking up the discs or the room where they are retained) or
logically (using file/volume encryption). If you want more than what
"personal" backup programs provide then start looking at server or
enterprise level backup products (but if this were a company that was
using/sharing Access databases then they should already have a backup
solution in place). PC Backup lets you run commands before/after the
backup, so you could tell it to run an encryption program on the
backup file after the backup completes. Acronis TrueImage Home has an
option to password protect the backup files but I found it unreliable
for logical file backups (but it still works okay for many users). Of
course, if you use EFS, TrueCrypt, BestCrypt, or some other
file/volume encryption product under which you save the Access
database then you don't need to encrypt your backup files - because it
is the encrypted file that gets saved in the non-encrypted backup
file.
You don't specify a budget and you don't specify the environment under
which the backup product will be used. It seems very odd that you do
not already have a backup mechanism in place. Is none of your other
data important to you or your company? If you don't do backups, you
have deemed all your data as unimportant or recreateable.
