Backup Media: Tape, DVD, CD....Paper?

Hello folks! You read that title correctly, paper can be used as a form of backup media. I am not talking about printing out your documents and filing them away in some nondescript binder to gather dust, no this one is a little more complicated than that.

I first want to point out that I would probably never use this as I don't really think that paper makes for a reliable backup media. The main reason for writing about it is that the particular program I am about to talk about is simply fascinating as hell.

Without further ado, on today's what the f@^k o'meter, I present PaperBack. Like it says above, this program lets you backup all your files to...PAPER. Very weird.

What it does is it converts the binary data of your files and converts them to over sized bitmaps that you print out. To restore it all you need is a local scanner. If you want to try it out, I created a paper backup of a cool new FREE anti virus software I am testing out called PC Tools Antivirus. You can download the file in PDF format, print it out and try to restore it using PaperBack to try it out. Careful though, it is 88 pages. Here is the file if you are brave enough: (Free Antivirus In PDF Form).

Another cool thing about this weird little program is it doesn't require any installation. It is a self running executable so you can run it from your USB thumb drive if you want.

So you are probably saying to yourself, "Why the hell would I want this utility El Di Pablo?" and to be honest, I asked myself the same question. Here is the answer the creators give on their website:

You may ask - why? Why, for heaven's sake, do I need to make paper backups, if there are so many alternative possibilities like CD-R's, DVD±R's, memory sticks, flash cards, hard disks, streamer tapes, ZIP drives, network storages, magnetooptical cartridges, and even 8-inch double-sided floppy disks formatted for DEC PDP-11? (I still have some). The answer is simple: you don't. However, by looking on CD or magnetic tape, you are not able to tell whether your data is readable or not. You must insert your medium into the drive (if you have one!) and try to read it.

Paper is different. Do you remember the punched cards? EBCDIC and all this stuff. For years, cards were the main storage medium for the source code. I agree that 100K+ programs were... unhandly, but hey, only real programmers dared to write applications of this size. And used cards were good as notepads, too. Punched tapes were also common. And even the most weird codings, like CDC or EBCDIC, were readable by humans (I mean, by real programmers).

Do I expect you to run out and start using this program as your primary means of data backup? Hell no! Do I want you to check it out because of its unusual nature? Hell yes! Give it a try, tell your friends about it. If it is good for anything, it is certainly good for a laugh.

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He Who Laughs Last, Recently Made a Backup

I am doing disaster recovery testing at my work. One of the senior systems administrators wrote a document on how to fully restore our major financial system from the ground up, and I am going through and validating it. During the validation process there are a couple of times in there where I have to restore data from backup.

Now, in a large company like the one I work for, you aren't using the built in backup, and saving stuff to CDs or DVDs. No you are using a major backup software like Veritas, or in our case, CA Arcserve, and are backing up your data to large capacity tapes.

What about for home use though? If you ask anyone in the business, they will tell you that the built in NT backup that comes with Windows is pretty basic, and certainly has its limits. Aren't your family photos, banking info, tax information, and the like important to you? When was the last time your backed things up?

I mentioned months ago, probably one of my first posts actually, about free software from Comodo. Comodo is a large security certificate company like Verisign, or Thawte, and to get their name out there, they decided to engineer and put out a bunch of free security software solutions. The items I wrote about months ago were their free firewall, and anti-virus solutions which work really great by the way.

I didn't mention that they offer a really good backup program that is easy to use. Here is a small list of some of Comodo Backup's key features:

• Easily backup files or folders anywhere on your computer, network, DVD-RW, CD-RW or FTP server
• Files can be written to a multi-session DVD if it already contains a file with the same name
• Email, FTP, zip and configuration passwords are stored in the registry with encryption
• Protect yourself against ever losing those critical files that took hours to create
• Quickly recover your data in the event of data loss
• Schedule backups to run automatically at a time that suits you
• Synchronized backup feature - save a file and it gets copied instantly
• Send E-mail notifications to team members about the status of a backup job
• Save Disk space by compressing your backups as ZIP files
• Configure in minutes with our intuitive interface

I have been using Comodo backup at home for a while now, and I think it is just great! It is very easy to use, and so far for me has been very reliable. You should totally check it out. Seriously, before it is too late.

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