Software

EZ Gig II

This software is an OEM version of an older version of Acronis' True Image. It builds images of your PC hard drives and you may compress them or split them to fit the backup set on several CDs or DVDs. The capacity of a DVD is not specified by EZ Gig II and must be entered manually.

It also allows you to mount an image as a virtual drive in Windows and you can easily duplicate hard disk content, e.g. after buying a new drive and using the new, faster one for your operating system and the old one for data.

The included CD is bootable and you can create and restore images and also clone drives or partitions without the necessity to boot into an operating system. The user interface (GUI) looks very much like Windows, it's really good to handle and you can also access USB devices that are attached to the host PC. The process of creating an image is the same as under windows.

Cryptainer 6.1

This software creates a virtual drive, which is saved in a file inside a folder of your choice. The chosen file size represents the capacity of the virtual volume, which can be loaded and unloaded. Virtual volumes are are encrypted using Blowfish448 or AES256, which is why the software is called Cryptainer. The password has to be between 8 and as many as 100 characters.

You don't really notice that files are encrypted and you can even create multiple encrypted volumes.

Encryption is a good security measure for important data on a mobile storage device, because if you lose it or if somebody steals it you don't have to think about the data and the possible trouble you get into when data gets into wrong hands. You can also put a mobile version of Cryptainer on any mobile storage device of your choice, so you can access your data on any Windows machine.

Smart-ER

With Smart-ER you can check the health and free space of your hard drives. An email will be send if an error occurs or because of insufficient capacity.

Second Copy 2000

This program helps to synchronize or replicate specified folders. You can specify scheduling for hours, days, right after Windows starts up or shuts down, and you can also exclude days. A good little program, that helps to have always a copy of the important data.

Apricorn also includes some Mac software that we did not try out: SuperDuper, Synchronise X and Apricorn Encrypter.