Product Reviews

If you want to keep a really safe copy of the data on your PC, it's sensible to store it on a separate device. That way, if the worst comes to the worst and something happens to your computer, at least your backups shouldn't be affected. But hang on, what if your house burns down or burglars nick the lot?

Online backup is the obvious answer. With SquirrelSave, your files are stored on a server in Memset's data centre. Your house could be struck by a meteor and your data would survive.

You install the SquirrelSave client program on your PC, then mark the files and folders you want to back up. The software then copies

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your files to the server. Each time you make a change to a file, the software detects this and updates the remote copy. SquirrelSave backs up only the bits of the file that have changed, so it doesn't hog your Internet connection all the time.

Files that have been backed up appear in Windows Explorer with a great big green tick on them; those you included but haven't yet been backed up in their latest form get a red cross. This makes it instantly obvious which files are safe.

As well backing up current copies of your files, SquirrelSave keeps older copies. If you realise you made an ill-advised change to the draft of your novel, you can recover the older version. Browse the server, find the copy of the file you need, then drag and drop it onto your PC.

Inevitably, one drawback is that it takes a long time to do the first backup. With at least a few gigabytes to upload, this is hardly surprising, bearing in mind that consumer Internet connections always have a much slower upload speed than download. But subsequent incremental backups are much quicker.

For less than a fiver a month, SquirrelSave is very good value. It works smoothly, it's easy to use, and it does what it claims to do.