Of all the things that can happen during Chinese New Year this week, I accidentally made the data on my network attached storage (NAS) device unreadable – and could easily have wiped out all the years of reports, financial statements and holiday pictures I’ve stored on those two 1TB drives.

After days of pulling hair out, I eventually salvaged everything. But the entire episode prompted me to ask if I was really as prepared as I thought if I had accidentally deleted my data or, in this case, plugged my drives into a new NAS without backing things up.

The answer lies in a series of software tools you can use at home, before really going to the pros in data recovery for help. Here are a few that I tried out while panicking through my attempt at rescuing my data.

Before we start, let’s remember to always back up important data, like your wedding day photos or your personal financial records.

A note to all small business owners like me – RAID – or mirroring your data on multiple hard drives on your NAS is not backup. You have to have more than one copy of your data on another DEVICE, not just another drive. That means even if your NAS dies, you have a portable drive somewhere with an up-to-date copy of the data.

Looking back, I don’t know what possessed me to plug two 1TB drives from an old QNap TS-209 II NAS into a new QNap TS-419P+ NAS. Perhaps it had to do with the retailer at the store confidently telling me that sure, I can just plug in the drives and they’d be recognised by another QNap NAS. Or perhaps I was overly confident about QNap.

Either way, I ended up with two 1TB drives that could not be recognised by the new NAS or the old one, when I tried plugging them back in. Not even with QNap’s Live CD, which boots up your PC with the company’s version of Linux, or when I plugged a drive into a Windows PC supporting the Linux EXT2/EXT3 file system, could I try to extract the data on the disks, which had not been formatted.

The reason: the disks had been re-partitioned by the new NAS during setup and the partition information for the portion of the disk containing the data could not be read by almost any other device.

1. iCare Recovery
The first tool I used, fearing the worst that the data on my drive cannot be read again, was iCare Recovery and the plan was to go “nuclear”. Heck, just read me the sectors on the drive and see what you can recover. That’s what this tool, iCare Recovery, does quite well in.

Like with other such demo versions, I could see some of my files with a test and I was super elated to be able to save a couple of them at least. I bought the software digitally for US$62.95 in my haste. Hey, having some data back is better than none. At this time, I had given up hope of folks from QNap replying (it was during Chinese New Year earlier this week, but they still haven’t replied today at the time of writing) or from help from its online forum.

So I went ahead and scanned one of the drives with iCare Recovery. It found loads of stuff, really too much in the end. These included long-ago deleted files when one of the drives was used in another computer. Now, that should tell you how scary things are – “delete” and “format” don’t really wipe data, not all of it anyway.

The main problem, though, was that iCare worked more or less in the assumption that this was a last gasp solution. It sorted things out according to the type of files it thinks the bits and bytes are. So, you get thousands of files, all renamed to something unrecognisable and ordered as, say, JPEG files or PDF documents.

At least with pictures, I could still run them in thumbnails, but I had to recognise ALL the hundreds of thousands of files individually. Worse, I had to open some of the files, like PDFs, to see what they were first. I gave up after an evening doing this. Getting a whole load of data in a mess was just slightly better than no data at all.

2. R-Studio
I looked to R-Studio, another application which took an even more detailed look at the hard disk and could return everything in the right directories with the right filenames.

I was suffering from tonsillitis during this time, and you can imagine, even with that, my mood lifted knowing I could get at least most of my data back. I clicked on the “buy” button immediately when I found that I could recover several files – like my yearly statements to the tax man – with R-Studio.

The bad news about R-Studio was that it took a lot of system memory to do the job. It would take my quad-core i7 CPU three hours to scan one disk, but worse, it would crash for lack of memory when trying to enumerate and list the many thousands of files in the drive. I stuck a spare 4GB RAM module into my existing 6GB machine to make 10GB but I still had problems showing all the files I wanted to recover.

It was frustrating being so close yet so far. The software would stop and do nothing for half an hour if I tried to list more than, say, 40 per cent of the files. It had detected an astonishing “17TB” of data – most of it including repetitive entries – from a 1TB drive and was trying to load that data in the PC’s memory because it doesn’t want to write to any of the disks to prevent more damage.

The downside: my machine was too slow to run R-Studio. Stopping the file listing halfway, I could get back perhaps 70- 80 per cent of the data but I was not sure they were the latest versions (several versions could have been detected when I stopped the process).

TestDisk
Finally, more in hope than expectation, I downloaded TestDisk, an excellent open-source recovery tool (free!) after reading the experiences of fellow QNap users in the forum. I hadn’t expected much from a small 3.3MB application after supposedly more sophisticated tools had not been the answer.

To my surprise, TestDisk even has a “GUI” that lets you avoid typing in commands by moving through the options available on a menu with your keyboard. It’s easy to use and guess what, it managed to find the lost partition on the disk “troubled” by the QNAp installation procedure.

This meant I could mount the drive and read the partition containing my data files and select them to be copied elsewhere. All I had to do was simply select the folders which I wanted to back up to an external drive and that’s all, 100 per cent of my data could be returned to what it was.

The only advice I’d have here is to hide the deleted files – otherwise you’d also copy over deleted files that include the annoying temporarily files that Microsoft Office generates when you have an open Word document, for example.

I’m just so glad that I managed to get the data out of the corrupted disks. Indeed, I learnt that there are many ways to get your data back. Unfortunately, instead of trying the least desperate measure, I panicked and went straight for the nuclear option and ended up spending unnecessary dollars.

Still, this somewhat illuminating episode also shows that you can sometimes save the data on your own drives, before deciding to send them to third-party companies. Okay, not everyone has Edison Chen-type photos but hey, it’s always better if you can solve things yourself, say, when you need the data over a long holiday, for example.

Share your own data recovery stories here and give others tips!

Singapore Expo is a long way away for most people, other than folks living in the east, so before you head down to Sitex, Singapore’s last quarterly IT bazaar for 2011, check out some of the standout deals that people have been putting up on brochure sites.

Yes, in the past, you had to squeeze your way through the halls for some small bargain, collecting loads of brochures on the way. Today, you can check out what’s on offer online before heading down for a more targeted trip.

Here are some great deals so far at this weekend’s show. We’ll update this page as we get more info.

D-Link’s DIR-825 router and DNS-320 network attached storage (NAS)

These are some of the best bang for buck gear that you can hook up your home with if you are looking for both high performance and value for money.

A great router for homes, the DIR-825 (S$129) supports dual-band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) Wi-Fi and comes with four gigabit ports that are necessary for today’s fast PCs and large file transfers. Not too long ago, similar routers cost a whole lot more, likely closer to or more than S$200.

The DNS-320 is another favourite NAS of home networking buffs because it’s not only good looking but also extremely speedy and feature-packed. Supporting two hard disks, it even lets you convert the backup device from a non-RAID to RAID 1 configuration easily, so you can mirror your hard disk content for safer backups.

Needless to say, it also comes with a bit-torrent client that you can use to download to your heart’s content, especially with that S$39-a-month M1 fibre plan offering 100Mbps to homes. At S$109, the DNS-320 is a definitely worth checking out for folks looking to set up their own NAS for the first time.

>> Download the brochure.

Pay S$48 for an Apple Magic Trackpad and memory upgrade with an Apple iMac

Buy an iMac at nubox’s stand, one of several offering Mac computers at the show, and you can pay just S$48 for a double memory upgrade (usually from 4GB to 8GB) and have an Apple Magic Trackpad to add to the style of your Apple computer.

The offer goes with several models of the iMac, from the entry level 2.5GHz version with a Core i5 chip and 21.5-inch screen costing S$1,648 to the top-end S$2,748 version with a 3.1GHz Core i5 chip and 27-inch screen.

Also noteworthy to folks opting to run Windows on a Mac: Parallels Desktop 6 and Windows Home Premium (OEM) are being bundled at S$238 (usual S$298). The package of software lets you run your Windows programs right on your Mac desktop as if they are Mac programs.

>> Download the brochures.

Print anywhere with an HP printer
Printers are a mainstay at each IT show in Singapore and this Sitex expo is no different. One interesting all-in-one machine worth checking out is HP’s Photosmart Premium Fax e-All-in-One, which lets you print remotely using the Internet. It also comes with all the useful features expected these days, like Wi-Fi support, so you can share the printer at home easily without worrying about wires.

The S$369 printer is going for S$299 at Sitex, so it may be worth checking out.

>> Download the brochures.

Buy Microsoft Office, get a wireless mouse free
This is the type of deal that will be welcome news to new PC or laptop owners. Microsoft is dangling a free Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000 (usually S$39.90) as part of a deal with its Office 2010 productivity software, which will be nice to install on a new PC.

The Office packages you can buy at the Microsoft booth include Office Home & Student Edition 2010, which costs S$199, and the Office Home & Business Edition 2010 which retails for S$298.

>> Download the brochures.

Nokia N9 at S$98 at StarHub

Nokia’s neat-looking N9 is going for a nice S$98 at StarHub’s booth, along with other Android favourites now like the Samsung Galaxy S II (S$218), HTC Sensation XE (S$198) and Motorola Razr (S$48), if you sign up with a high-end mobile plan.

Worth queuing up? Well, if you plan to spend a day at Singapore Expo anyway, no harm doing so!

>> Download the brochures.

Share with us other great Sitex deals you have spotted in the comments here!

Clad in an aluminum casing, the Micro Vault also features a retractable USB connector to protect it from dust or damage. It also has a LED indicator for convenient checks on data transfer status.

When plugged into a corresponding USB 3.0 port, transfer speeds are significantly faster than USB 2.0 speeds, with Sony claiming a read speed of up to 120 MB/s. Current USB 2.0 read speeds fall between 30 to 42 MB/s.

The initial offerings of the Micro Vault flash drives will come in 8GB, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB. Prices will be available when they are launched in November 2011.

Researchers in Singapore have found a way to pack six times the data today into future hard disks by basically ordering the structures on the physical drive more neatly – like packing clothes in a suitcase, they say.

Using a materials process known as nano-patterning, they have been able to create arrays of magnetic bits that can potentially store up to 3.3 Terabit per square inch ( Terabit/in²) of data on a hard disk. That is six times the recording density of current devices.

In other words, the same drive you see at Sim Lim Square storing some 1TB today could hold 6TB of data in future by using this new technology from IMRE (Institute of Materials Research and Engineering), which is one of Singapore’s government-funded A*Star research institutes.

Current hard disks use randomly distributed magnetic “grains” – with a few tens of grains to form one bit – to hold about 0.5 Terabit/in² of data. What the Singapore researchers did differently was to order the data into magnetic “islands”, with each one able to store one bit of information. This boosts storage capabilities to 3.3 Terabit/in².

“What we have shown is that bits can be patterned more densely together by reducing the number of processing steps,” said Dr Joel Yang, the scientist at IMRE who headed the project, in a press release last week.

He came up with the “magic” in the entire project – a lithography process that uses salt, or sodium chloride, in the developer solution. This helps create the required nano structures without expensive equipment.

The project is the result of work at IMRE as well as the National University of Singapore and Data Storage Institute. The researchers are looking to pack even more data into hard disks.

Media storage company SanDisk unveiled a whooping seven new products last Friday, including one which SanDisk hopes will innovate an entire line of products separate from its SD cards and USB flash drive lines.

SanDisk’s memory storage devices have now spawned a new retail line which SanDisk is calling “data preservation”. Unlike data backups, data preservation is about quality, not quantity. The new SanDisk Memory Vault purportedly guarantees an estimated preservation life of a 100 years (calculated through temperature cycling tests – details here).

Coming in 8GB and 16GB versions, the Memory Vault is not meant to be a hard disk to dump tons of data in. The long-term reliability of the device is held at the expense of space, and is developed for those who wish to pass on important photos, such as family photos of important events like birth, graduation or marriages, throughout the generations. Prices have yet to be announced and it will be available at the later part of the year.

SanDisk has enhanced their line of SD cards to integrate with the SD 3.0 Ultra High Speed bus architecture. The SanDisk Extreme Pro SDXC memory card goes up to 64GB in capacity, double the capacity of the SanDisk Exteme memory cards. With write speeds of up to 90MB per second, the card is aimed at high-market professionals who require the speed to take continuous burst shots. It will come in capacities of 8GB, 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, with prices ranging from S$69 (8GB) to S$529 (64GB).

Retail consumers who want to store tons of music, photos and videos on their tablets or smartphones (which can accept external memory) will appreciate the Mobile Ultra microSDHXC card. Compatible with any device with a microSDHX card slot, this microSD boasts a capacity of up to 64GB, which would easily store thousands of photos and MP3 files. Consumers who do not require so much space have a choice of lower capacity cards as well. Prices start at a S16.60 for a 4GB and up to S$285 for a 64GB card.

SanDisk also released two new designs to their Cruzer USB flash drives. The Cruzer Fit is tiny- it’s slightly bigger than a 10-cent coin, and is designed to be as unobtrusive as possible, something which netbook users may appreciate. The tiny size factor, though, can be problematic- it took some tries fumbling with the cap to get it the USB out. Drive capacities come between 4GB and 16GB, with prices ranging from S$12 to S$36.

The Cruzer Switch’s fancy design sees the cap on a swivel that slides out nicely and flips over to the back when the USB is in use. At the very least, users would stop losing USB caps. Other than that, it’s just another ordinary USB storage device, with capacities running from 2GB to 64GB, and prices ranging from S$9.20 to S$64.

With increased read/write speeds for storage devices, SanDisk also released the ImageMate All-in-One USB 3.0 Reader/Writer. USB 3.0 will enable quicker transfer speeds from storage device to one’s computer. It comes with four card slots and is compatible with USB 2.0 devices, and is priced at S$65.

At the media event last week, SanDisk also took the chance to trump up its entry into the SSD (solid state drive) market for consumers, with their release of the SanDisk Ultra SSD. With a read speed of up to 280MB/sec and write speed of 270MB/sec, no moving parts and long-term reliability, the Ultra SSD promises faster boot-up timings and quicker app launching.

While SSDs can be considered to be superior to hard drives, because of their reliability, such technology comes at a price: a 60GB Ultra SSD will set you back S$230, while the 120GB and 240GB versions are S$415 and S$790 respectively.

Another one of Singapore’s quarterly tech bazaars, Comex 2011, opens its doors today to thousands of bargain hunters eager to cash in on discounts – or perceived discounts – on laptops, headphones, printers, TVs, broadband plans and just about anything tech you can find on the island.

One of the most hotly-awaited deals – HP’s TouchPad – has already been sold out this morning. Only 100 units of each version of the tablet (16GB and 32GB) went on sale today and the queue numbers were snapped up in no time. A queue had formed as early as 4am, according to the good folks from The Straits Times Digital Life.

HP is still selling the tablet from S$118 in the coming days, but you’d have to love queues to get in line for one of these fire sale items.

Meanwhile, here are a few other deals we’d be interested with:

1. HP’s Officejet 6500A all-in-one at S$299
Down from the usual S$399, this inkjet-based AIO machine will fit well with home and small businesses which don’t need the crispness of laser and prefer perhaps a bit of colour printing on occasions. Like its bigger brother, the Officejet Pro 8500A ($499), this AIO can connect via Wi-Fi and offers two-sided printing.

Download the HP flyers here.

2. Free Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 with broadband signup
StarHub is giving away a spanking new tablet from Samsung if you sign up for its 50Mbps fibre plan at about S$80 a month. Yeah, we know you are paying more each month for your subscription, but hey, if you don’t wish to pony up S$848 for the 16GB 3G version of the hottest Android tablet now, there’s always this option!

Download StarHub’s flyers here.

3. Seagate external hard disks
The usual hard disk fest continues at Comex 2011. We know you’d buy something you don’t need – and when there’s nothing to buy, people seem to just buy a fancy red external drive just for fun. Here’s what Seagate is offering.

Download Seagate’s flyers here.

4. HP Envy 14 comes with free printer
Buy a S$2,499 Envy 14 laptop – a great rival to the Macbook Pro in our eyes – and get a free Nikon S1000PJ 12-meg camera, an HP Deskjet 1000 all-in-one printer and Trend Micro anti-virus for free. A good deal for a laptop that usually goes for the same price – without the freebies.

If the Envy is not your cup of tea, check out the ProBooks and EliteBooks from HP. Much nicer designs than previous HP units and definitely better built than the consumer Pavilion range, they are worth checking out.

Download the HP PC flyers here.

We’ll be updating with more deals as the show goes on in the next few days!

If you must absolutely have the fastest storage device around for home use, you’d be happy to hear that the OCZ Revodrive 3 solid state drive (SSD) is coming to Singapore.

We just got word that the latest version of the PCI Express-based drive – yes, the chips are mounted on a card – is coming to Singapore via the local distributor Ban Leong Technologies. Limited numbers of the 240GB version are going for a hefty S$899, though you can expect discounts on the street.

What’s the big deal about the Revodrive 3? Can’t you just bring together two 120GB OCZ Vertez 3s – probably the fastest SSDs on their own now – and plug them onto my motherboard and run them in RAID 0? Well, you could, assuming you have an Intel Sandybridge-based motherboard that supports SATA3 natively.

You see, a lot of the speed of the Vertex 3 comes from its fast Sandforce controller that takes advantage of SATA 3′s faster transfers (compared to SATA 2). But the advantage is seen mostly in systems that run Intel’s latest motherboard chipsets. Folks on the older X58 chipset and running an older Intel Core i7 chip are out of luck.

That is, unless you plug the drive straight into the even speedier PCI Express bus, bypassing the SATA lane altogether. Early reviews have looked good (Anandtech). Plus, the specs on paper are impressive as well, with off-the-chart sequential reads and writes:

Sequential Read AS-SSD: 405 MB/s
Sequential Write AS-SSD: 260 MB/s
4K Random Read AS-SSD: 60,000 IOPS (235 MB/s)
4K Random Write AS-SSD: 60,000 IOPS (235 MB/s)
(Incompressible data performance is measured using AS-SSD; 64 thread for 4K specs)

The Singapore price, like all SSDs sold here, is more expensive than what you can find on Newegg, for example. The main reason to buy local is still straightforward warranty and returns, which OCZ is offering for three years. An even smarter move would be to wait for the price to drop, as SSDs become more common.

So you’ve just bought your laptop and want to swap out the hard disk for a speedy solid state drive (SSD) instead? This is usually a straightforward task thanks to the modular designs these days, like on the Apple MacBook Pro and fortunately, the HP Envy 14 I had just bought recently.

But some things still need to be taken care of to ensure everything runs smooth with your speedy new drive. Here’s a guide to install an SSD into your new HP Envy 14.

(Disclaimer: Techgoondu is not responsible for any damage or loss of warranty to your laptop!)

1. Set up your recovery discs
Before you do anything, make sure you create the recovery discs that contain all the software your PC comes with. Without these, you’d have to get a separate copy from HP, which won’t be free.

Go to Start/Programs/HP Recovery Manager/HP Recovery Media Creation and fire up the process. It takes an hour – maybe more – to copy all the stuff onto three dual-layer DVD discs or four CDs, but HP offers the option of copying onto a USB drive, which is much faster.

Only thing you have to note is that USB drives do break down more easily and files can be accidentally deleted. And for HP, you only get to create one set of recovery discs. So, make sure you store your recovery software securely.

2. Take out the battery housing
Before you remove anything from the laptop, power it off and unplug the power cord. Flip over the Envy 14 and locate the notch that secures the battery housing. Push it and lift the housing.

3. Remove the battery
You’ll now see the battery and hard disk. Find the two orange tabs on the battery – these are the catches that hold it in place. Take out the battery first.

4. Remove the hard disk
There are several screws that hold the hard disk and its housing in place. Remove them and pull up the housing. You’ll find that the housing holds in the hard disk pretty snugly, so try to push it out slowly. Avoid tearing the black plastic, which can be easily damaged if you’re impatient. In my case, I found a nice, speedy Western Digital Scorpio Black in there.

5. Check out the SSD
My replacement SSD was an OCZ Vertex 2 I had in my previous laptop. This was pretty fast, so I decided to migrate the rather humble 120GB capacity into the new laptop and use the original WD hard disk in an external case. Most of my data is stored in a networked attached storage (NAS) machine anyway, so I don’t need so much capacity on the Envy 14. Besides OCZ, other SSD makers such as Corsair, Kingston and Crucial are also worth considering – just make sure you get one that slots into a 2.5-inch slot for simple installation.

6. Install the SSD
In the same way that you take out the hard disk, slowly slide back the SSD into the hard disk housing. Then place it back into the laptop and screw it back in. Replace the battery, lock it (using the orange catch) and finish the physical installation by slotting back the battery housing.

7. Install the software
The next thing to do is to get your recovery discs you created earlier and install the software. When you power on the laptop, quickly press ESC to display options to re-install the software on your laptop. Just follow the instructions for recovery on screen and place each disc into the drive when you are prompted to.

Unless you are using a USB drive, this is a rather lengthy process that can take hours. I’d go get a beer and come back once in a while to check on things. When everything’s installed, and you get into Windows for the first time, make sure you run the Windows performance test immediately. You can access this by going to Control Panel and clicking on Performance Information and Tools.

Windows 7 plays well with SSDs in that it won’t defragment the disk and cause it to slow down. Running this Windows performance test lets the operating system know that you’re running an SSD, so it would not try to defrag it.

The only thing left to do then is to enjoy your SSD! You’ll notice that battery life is much improved. Of course, it’s faster to boot up (about 22 sec for me) and to fire up programs as well.

Every big consumer IT company — like Apple with its iCloud, Microsoft with SkyDrive, and Amazon with Cloud Drive — is moving into some kind of cloud-based storage sharing solution in the marketplace.

Don’t even mention the dozens of smaller companies in this space like trailblazer Dropbox, Tonido and Pogoplug out there.

Now even consumer product manufacturers are moving in on the act to enable “cloud sharing” on their devices.

At a media launch in Singapore today, storage vendor Iomega trotted out their new range of Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices that allow people to share data with others on their new personal cloud.

Basically it allows other machines to download, upload and even sync data with the NAS devices — after having been given permission by the owner of course — via authenticating through an Iomega server. It’s backed by an AES 128-bit key encryption, so it defeats man-in-the-middle hijacks.

Currently the devices work on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms, with support for iOS included. According to the Iomega folks, support for Android is on the way.

Actually, I like the home media network hard drive cloud editions Iomega were showing off today. The 1TB and 2TB versions are being sold at US$189.99 (S$209) and $S299.99 (S$283), which has fairly decent specs, device support and software bundled in for such a price point.

These products were just available in Singapore during the recent PC Show 2011 at Suntec City last weekend.

File sharing made easy

Adding in easy file sharing and syncing capabilities was a smart move on Iomega’s part, and I suspect it might become a huge hit with casual users.

I know several savvy geek friends who already run file servers that friends can FTP into, but the pitch for Iomega’s personal cloud is that it is easier to use. Invite a friend via an email address, authenticate through a web interface to Iomega servers, which will then create a secure tunnel for file sharing.

It’s not anywhere new though, and just drawing from a local example I’ve seen slivers of this technology on our homegrown Singapore iTwin product almost two years back, about a year-and-a-half before Iomega announced this in January this year at the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas.

Sure iTwin is point-to-point, auto-discovery of dongle, and even more brain-dead simple to use as its just plug-and-play, but it’s essentially a similar secure remote access file sharing technology.

I think Iomega’s NAS drives with their “cloud” capability is a far stronger proposition though. Storage is a product that businesses and people consume more and more, given that we live in a world of increasing data explosion.

Will people buy iTwin just for remote file sharing, however simple? Not sure about that.

Just how many more flavours of cloud do we have?

And finally a rant that’s entirely off topic.

As a cranky curmudgeon, I’ve already written reams about the bastardization of the term “cloud” just because it is the in-word.

Essential to the cloud definition, at least in the past, was that the application or data is hosted off-premises. Does turning your PC into a miniaturized data centre for friends justify coining yet another version of the cloud word?

Apparently yes.

You know, not too long ago, we had a term for this definition of “personal cloud”: It’s called remote access and file sharing.

Sigh.

Now, there is an easy way to do it – especially for those who are averse to hooking up the iPhone to the computer – with Iomega’s latest doodad, the SuperHero Backup and Charger for iPhone. This nifty little S$99 charger and backup dock will back up your photos and contacts (but not music) to a bundled 4GB SD card inserted into a slot behind the device.

But first, you need need to download and install the free Iomega SuperHero app available from the Apple App Store. Once that’s done, just plug in your iPhone, fire up the app and configure your backup settings.

The app’s menu is simple and easy to use, and clearly displays the backup and restore options available. You can choose to back up photos and/or contacts as well as restore the data when necessary. In addition, you can also encrypt backups of contacts with a password.

Backing up my contacts with encryption took less than a minute, while backing up photos can take a really long time. This is due to speed limitations of Apple’s iPod Access Protocol that is used to access the iPhone without a computer. Things get a tad faster once you’ve completed your first backup, after which the device performs incremental backups for new photos and contacts.

Bottomline: A limitation of the Iomega SuperHero is that it doesn’t back up equally precious music, videos and apps which would still have to be backed up with iTunes. So, using this device does not guarantee that you can retrieve everything on your iPhone when things go awry. For now, it only complements your iTunes backups and gives you additional copies of contacts and photos. After all, lots of copies keep stuff safe.