CLICKFREE TRANSFORMER USES ANY EXTERNAL HARD

It's not "if" your hard drive will fail, it's "when." A while back I wrote about the Clickfree portable backup drive that automatically makes a complete backup of your computer by simply plugging it into any available USB port. Since then, the company has come up with a number of innovations that I thought you should know about.

One of the limitations was the capacity of the drives they offered. Clickfree now offers a variety of hard drives with various capacities. There are now 5 portable models with 250GB ($129.99), 320GB (179.99) and 500GB ($219.99) versions. The desktop line offers a 500 gigabyte ($179.99) and their top-of-the-line 1 terabyte version (249.99). But while adding larger capacity models certainly makes sense, I'd like to tell you about their two more innovative products that do the same thing but in a different way.

The Clickfree HD Transformer cable ($59.99) to me offers the most flexibility in that it allows you to use most any external USB hard drive to back up your computer. Instead of having to buy the hard drive itself, Clickfree's Transformer cable is a small USB cable that sports the USB plug at one end with a small dongle at the other. The brains of the Clickfree backup is within the dongle itself. Now you can use any USB External drive by simply plugging it into the Transformer. Chances are you may already have an external drive you no longer use because you got a newer one with more capacity. Now you can use that drive as a Clickfree backup system. And even if you don't have an extra drive, you can buy terabyte drives these days for under a hundred bucks so you're still in a really good position with a Transformer.

As with any Clickfree backup product, you just insert it into any PC or Intel-based Macintosh and without doing anything else, Clickfree will automatically find and backup all of your computer's data. When finished, simply remove it. Every time you repeat this process, Clickfree knows what was added since the last time and simply backs up anything new.

The other newest Clickfree addition is the Traveler. About the size of a credit card, the Traveler is a flash memory device that performs the same type of fully automated Clickfree backup as the hard drive models. The Traveler conceals a small ribbon-like cable with a USB plug that pivots out for accessibility. Just plug the Traveler into any computer and the same Clickfree backup or restore process begins. The Traveler comes in three capacities, 16GB ($79.99), 32GB ($149.99) and 64GB ($249.99). The obvious advantage of the Traveler is it's small, compact form that makes it easy to take anywhere.

Finally, Clickfree has added a line of backup recordable DVDs that performs backups for specific kinds of data files. The PHOTO DVD Backup automatically searches for all of your digital pictures and then backs them up by burning them directly to the Clickfree DVD. The MUSIC DVD Backup does the same but searches for all of your mp3 and other music files. The OFFICE DVD Backup seeks out and preserves all of your Microsoft Office data in the same manner. All of these Backup DVDs are available in a 3 ($9.99), 5 ($14.99) and 10 ($27.99) pack.

It's really nice to see that Clickfree continues to take their technology and find new and innovative ways to apply their backup solution.

www.clickfree.com

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