Normally, one would expect to have to properly ‘eject’ a USB drive before unplugging. The Clickfree program seems to give no assistance with this and the standard Windows method indicates it cannot eject it as it is currently in use. Rather than shut the system down to allow clean removal, I did what most would do and after waiting a reasonable amount of time, unplugged it anyway.
Putting it back into the docking base (which was still attached to the first PC), the program auto-started and I got the backup countdown box. Again, I had the UAC dialog interrupting the process and so the backup did not happen without manual intervention. This time, 16 files at 67.3MB were processed. Going back to the netbook to see if would discover Clickfree over the network, and again it failed.
Time to try a third PC, after again having no success with correctly ‘ejecting’ the backup drive. This was to be another Windows 7 laptop, running 32-bit Pro (I have pretty much moved away from XP now and didn’t really get on with Vista). Plugging the drive in before the PC had booted up did not allow the Device Driver and software to auto detect / run and so once the PC had fully started, I removed and reconnected the drive. There are instructions on the Quick Start on how to perform a manual load of the software if necessary.
Backup installation progressed very much as before. The countdown ran through and again there was a UAC dialog confirmation which needed to be clicked before the file backup happened. Again, I tried to access the drive from the other two PC’s. the 32-bit Windows 7 netbook found the drive over the network, but the 64-bit system still could not. I tried to trigger another backup of the netbook across to the third PC, but it said that PC was still backing up (it clearly wasn’t). It seems that was because the backup status screen was still active. Once that was closed, the remote backup progressed without issue. Curiously, this did not give a UAC prompt.
Testing for ‘robustness’ of the solution did not fare well either. A reboot of the PC which had the Clickfree drive connected resulted in no PC’s being able to see the drive, not even the one it was plugged into. Unplugging the drive and replacing once the system was up and running resolved this but it does not bode well for a setup and forget solution (this could not be repreated on the Netbook and the software and drive correctly started up on a reboot).
Moving the drive back to the Windows 7 64-bit PC kicked off an automatic backup again, this time without the UAC prompt. It seems that may be coming up just for the first backup of each system. However, it seemed like the 64-bit system was on a different network as far as Clickfree was concerned with neither 32-bit system managing to find it. This is despite all PC’s being in the same workgroup and the 32-bit PC’s managing to see the ‘clickfreeusbdrive_hd_f’ share on the 64-bit PC that the system creates for the backup drive.In the same way, the Status software on the 64-bit system could not see the 32-bit PC’s on the network.
Exploring the Clickfree drive purely as a USB Hard Disk shows a basic 250GB drive formatted as NTFS and a separate 200MB read-only drive (presumably Flash) which contains the backup program and some Tools (which presumably may be referred to in help screens or via any on-line / telephone support). One key tool which I did not get to try is ‘FixMyClickFreeBackup.exe’.
The data is held as standard files in a hidden folder structure – ‘\s\s\s\s\s\Clickfree Backup’ (quite why so many subdirectory levels is baffling). In here is one folder per PC, numbered 1, 2, 3 etc. with that containing a folder for each drive that may have been backed up (C, D etc.). With so many folder levels, it is possible for file write failures to occur when backing up a data file with a particularly long pathname, close to NTFS limits of about 256 characters, where the extra folder depth takes it over the edge (as is seen sometimes in WHS).
Conclusions
Clickfree C2N is a clever concept that would serve a small, unsophisticated home network well. It backs up a user’s critical data but may need some technical ‘tweaking’ if it doesn’t catch data files with less common file extensions. More importantly are the likely omissions from this sort of backup mechanism. You cannot recover a PC using it or restore application programs. Also, as it runs under the permissions of the currently logged in user, it may not catch data files that belong to other users that are located in their protected personal profiles.
There only seems to be a single backup for each PC, with no facility to recover files from earlier backups. Deleting a video file and replacing it with an empty file of the same file name caused the empty file to appear as a new file in the next backup, but no means of getting back to the earlier version.
Without a safe removal mechanism for the drive, there may be a chance of data corruption over time, but clearly the intention is to leave the device connected to a single PC once all the others have the software installed.
While I eventually managed to get one PC to back up over the network, the failure of any interaction between 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 systems shows that the system is not yet foolproof.
The most glaring omission is the ability to recover old files. Should someone accidently edit or over-write some important data, the backup will prove of no use unless the error is caught immediately. As a result, I am not sure I could recommend this as ‘The Ultimate Family Backup Experience’.
Pricing for this sort of solution clearly has to cover both the hardware and the included software. Whether the differential is worthwhile for backup software that only covers data files maybe questionable. I could not find a UK retail price for the 250GB model that was being reviewed, but Amazon have the 320GB at £120 (or £100 from a Marketplace reseller). That compares with less than £50 for a Western Digital, Seagate or Toshiba 320GB USB Portable Hard Disk. The 500GB model is on special offer on the UK TV Shopping channel QVC at £132. (normal price £146). Clickfree themselves are retailing the 320GB at $160 with free shipping to US customers.
