FAQ's

Is it safe to do backup over the internet?

Definitely. Your data is securely stored in a REMOTE backup server hosted by you, using military level encryption employed by most multi-national banks that require a high level of security. All of your data is 128-bit encrypted and compressed before being uploaded and stored on our backup secure server.

Encryption and decryption will only be done on client’s machine with user's password, which will not be transmitted during uploading and downloading. Therefore, nobody, not even us, can read the files.

What operating system platforms are supported?

We essentially support all common operating systems and databases, including Windows, Linux, Mac, NetWare and, UNIX.

What Relational Databases are supported?

What if we already have a backup system?

Even if you are currently backing up to tape, zip disk, CD-RW, or other form of media, more than likely, the process is not completely automated. An employee must change out the media periodically and manually verify that completed backups are successful. Our online backup system bypasses this tedious process. Backups are 100% automated, and backup reports are sent by email daily. At any time, you can retrieve or verify your files on our server from virtually any location in the world!

Plus, onsite backup systems cannot provide adequate protection against theft, fire, or any other form of local system failure. As they say, it's best not to have all your eggs in one basket. We recommend using our services in addition to any local backup mechanisms you have in place already.

What do I need to set up a backup solution?

Only an internet connection is needed! This completely eliminates the need to purchase expensive backup hardware and/or media. Because the system is completely automated, you don't have to spend valuable time swapping disks or tapes.

How long will an online backup take?

The initial backup always takes the longest, and can vary from minutes to hours to days, depending on the volume of data being backed up. However, after the first full backup, our server compares its file store with the files on your computer and backs up only those files that have been modified since the last backup, which minimizes bandwidth overhead and can take as little as 2 minutes. Transfer speeds of course depend on the speed of your internet connection, but we can accommodate speeds ranging from old fashioned dialup all the way up to corporate LAN connections.

Why our prices are so low?

You are probably wondering how we can charge as much as 75% less than our competition and still be in business.

First: We designed our company to be affordable from the start. Our philosophy is simple. If the price is too high, people will shop around or stick with their existing backup system. We knew we had to find a way to keep our costs down to make online backups affordable to the typical small business owner. So we created a business plan and set goals to keep our product affordable, yet at the same time provide superior services to our customers. How do we do this? For starters, we don’t have un-necessary expenses like paying for bidding wars in the search engines or blowing large amounts of money on fancy marketing. We also keep our operating expenses to a minimum by streamlining our systems and our billing process. We own our data center, we own all of our servers and we keep all of our services in-house.

Second: We are straight-forward and honest with our customers. We do not play bait and switch games with our customers. We never lure our customers in with attractive prices only to raise them shortly there after. Our theory is simple, keep our customers happy and they’ll stay with us as well as refer friends and colleagues.

My first time remote backup is taking for ever, what can be done to speed this up?

You can use the Seed Loading Utility to backup your backup set to local hard disk (instead of directly to the backup server) and then transport the backup data, using removable hard disk, to the offsite backup server. Our administrator can then load all your backup files from your removable hard disk into your backup account. This could then save you days (even weeks) of performing your first full backup. Since subsequent backups will be incremental backup (only new or updated files will be uploaded to the server), you should have no problems finishing backing up all files afterwards.

Can you suggest what I should back up?

We have many of suggestions about what you may want to back up in the Backup Sets tab. You can edit any of these existing backup sets to your liking. We generally recommend that you back up data that is difficult to replace, like photos, email, contacts, financial records, and office documents. You can also create your own custom backup sets based on rules that you create. You can also do it the old fashioned way and select the specific files and directories you want to back up.

Can I backup an entire Operating System?

Our system was made to back up your most important files (email, contacts, photos, financials, etc.), but not your system and application files, which are easy to restore via your original CDs.

Technically, you can back up your applications and system files, but we don't advise this. This is done for what's called a "bare metal restore," which our system is not designed to do. Typically, if your computer dies, you get new hardware, and attempting to just image your new computer with your old disk image with our system (or any other backup application for that matter) is a tricky endeavor. If you are ambitious, you are welcome to give it a shot, but it's not something we recommend or support.

However, you can still backup/restore the operating system by doing the followings:
To backup all files including the operating system, please do this:

1. Add all files to your backup source
2. Add a SystemState backup type to your backup account (Windows only)

To restore all files including the operating system, please do this:

1. Re-install the operating system and applications
2. Restore the SystemState backup to your machine (Windows only) - To restore the System State data on a domain controller, you must first start your computer in a special startup option called "Directory Services Restore Mode". To access "Directory Services Restore Mode", press F8 during startup and select it from the list of startup options.
3. Restore all files to your machine

What do I have to do in order to backup open files?

You need support from the underlying OS. Windows XP and 2003, by default, come with Volume Shadow Copy, which allows backing up open files. For older platforms, e.g. Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000 or NetWare, we would recommend adding a third party open file manager option (e.g. St. Bernard Open File Manager - http://www.stbernard.com/) which might cost around US$100 for each workstation and US$300 for each server if opened files backup is required.

*Open file option is not required on Linux/Unix/Mac OS X because no files are held exclusively open by applications.

I'm getting the message "The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file" what can I do?

When you get this message while backing up “C:\xxx\yyy\zzz.txt” is because another application has held a read-exclusive lock on “C:\xxx\yyy\zzz.txt”. The backup agent, therefore, is unable to open the file to read its contents. Please try the followings to resolve this problem:

• Enable the Volume Shadow Copy option for the corresponding backup set if you are on Windows 2003 or XP.
• If you are on an older version for Windows, you may need to obtain a generic “Open File Manager” in order to backup the locked files.
• If the locked file is not important (e.g. C:\pagefile.sys), simply exclude the locked file from your backup source. By doing so, this message will not appear again.
• If the locked file is a database file held open by one of our supported applications (e.g. Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, Oracle, Lotus Domino/Notes, MySQL), simply use the corresponding add-on module provided to backup the database. This way, you can backup the database you want (using the application specific APIs) without accessing the database file directly.
• If the locked file is a file held open by some other third party applications, you can use the [Pre/Post Command Line Tool] to shutdown/restart the application that is locking the file before/after a backup job to make sure that no locks will be placed on files that you need to backup.

Are there any size limits or other constraints to the types of files I can back up?

You can back up pretty much any type or size of file. However, a few operating-system specific files can't be backed up, like the pagefile or prefetch files on Windows.

How do you respect my privacy?
The short answer is: We don't read your data or sell your information to anyone.  The long answer is in our privacy section.

What's the end result?
Well, we're happy to announce that we're still a small company that expects to be in business for many years to come. All this, of course, is due to our happy customers.

With hurricane season fast approaching, it is imperative that your data is not only current and safe, but most importantly accessible. Saving money by foregoing a secure data backup plan can be a fatal error in judgment; 80% of all businesses that experience a major data loss or failure go out of business within a year.

Whether at the individual, departmental or corporate level, the reality isn't if you will have data loss or destruction, but when it will happen. With Florida Remote Backup Service as your "data insurance policy," when disaster strikes, you'll be covered.