Spare Backup

Spare Backup is an online backup service for Windows (XP/Vista) machines that is targeted primarily to home or small business/workgroup users. Pricing is on a monthly or annual basis (with discounts for annual purchases), and starts at $6.99/month ($4.99 a month with a year subscription) for up to 50 GB of non-commercial use space. A 14-day free trial is available.

The service is a combination of two primary components: A downloadable client that runs on the customer's computer, and the backend software and servers which run in the vendor's data centers that handle the communications and data storage for the customers. When initiating the software, the customer selects a user name and password for access to their online account; as well as receives a generated encryption key (the "Spare Key") that will be used to encrypt the data stored for the customer. The vendor states that only the customer can access their encryption key. Backed up data is encrypted on the customer's machine prior to delivery to the vendor's data center for storage (and the delivery itself is over 128-bit SSL protected channels); and Spare Keys, if lost, can be retrieved by the customer via a challenge-based mechanism.

A key feature as touted by the vendor is the product's ability to automatically select which files on the customer's machine should be backed up; including both applications and supporting files which contain key attributes or configuration data used by the applications. According to the vendor, the automatic selection process relies on vendor-defined "presets," which are designed to select both specific files and file types as well as their related data. Among the applications and locations specifically listed by the vendor as recognized by the preset logic are Microsoft Office files (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), Outlook, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and files located on the desktop, in the My Documents folder, or in the My Pictures folder, among others. The vendor states that these presets can be changed by the customer if they desire less than a full data backup.

Other features include support for the backup of up to five versions of individual files; support for the backup of opened/locked files; support for incremental backups; and performance management tools including backup/bandwidth throttling, and an "auto-pause" feature that automatically pauses the backup when user interaction is detected.

Spare Backup is available for individuals with a single computer or in the "Workgroup" edition (Spare Workgroup) with support for 2 to 25 team members (or single users with more than one computer to back up). The Workgroup version in particular allows for the central management of the backups performed by all computers in the group as well as the ability to protect all data in the group with a single Spare Key. Spare Workgroup pricing is listed at $14.99/month or $149/year for up to 40 GB of storage; with volume discounting scaling up to $189.99/month or $1,899/year for up to 1 TB of storage.

Newly announced from the vendor is their intention to offer an SMB targeted version of the platform exclusively through channel partners. This SMB version will be priced per seat, with a minimum annual subscription price of $400.

Spare Backup is available now. Contact the vendor for further information.