Finally, a reliable, long-term archive system

In today's litigious society, it's necessary to take as many steps as possible to ensure that one's business is protected.

From a computing point of view, the most important kind of protection is to make sure your company's information is regularly backed up. But while you may think your company's data are being protected via daily backup procedures, you may want to take a closer look.

For starters, many companies don't back up their e-mail. The ones that do usually find out when it's too late that their e-mail archives only go back a year or two.

That's usually because e-mails are typically deleted from the servers on which they are stored during routine tape-maintenance rotation.

And even if they keep those tape reels, magnetic tape is not a very reliable long-term storage medium. Tape has a short shelf life.

Then there's the issue of finding the document. It can literally take hundreds of hours and cost a fortune in the human resources you'll need to locate them.

There's got to be a better way, and there is. OptiVault is a device born as something entirely different. Its maker, Primera Technology, is known for its automated CD and DVD duplication devices, including the Bravo XR. The clever people at Primera realized that with the proper software, the Bravo XR could be turned into the perfect optical archival system.

Using a customized version of the award-winning backup software EMC Dantz Retrospect, e-mails and other critical files are automatically archived on optical media according to customizable scripts. Each disc is also printed with a unique serial number that helps identify and locate a single disk from the backup set to which it belongs.

This is an exclusive feature of OptiVault, which makes for fast and easy cataloging and retrieval. And since the OptiVault is fully automated, it makes it an ideal archival system for small- to medium-size businesses.

OptiVault uses nonerasable, nonrewritable media. This is critical so that whatever data you may present in a court of law will be acceptable because it cannot be altered in any way. This Write Once Read Many or WORM specification complies with government regulations that deal with such matters.

A full backup set of 25 discs offers a capacity of up to 117 uncompressed gigabytes or 234 GB of compressed data. This gives you more than enough room for every e-mail plus attachments generated by hundreds of typical users per month.

This system can archive and back up e-mails and other important files not only from the server, but also from networked client computers running Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Solaris and Netware.

OptiVault backs up and quickly recovers all e-mails sent, received or deleted through Microsoft Exchange, including attachments. It operates unobtrusively in the background of your Exchange server, reliably backing up all e-mails on optical media.

Finally, Primera makes available special optical media discs that hold onto their data for more than 50 years, making them ideal for use in the OptiVault. Primera's TuffCoat Archival Media is a printable DVD that comes packaged in clear 50-disc holders that can be stacked for convenient storage.

The OptiVault sits on a table or can be rack-mounted and comes with an integrated blue light that makes it easy to see its operation through its clear, lockable front door.

The OptiVault connects via a USB 2.0 connection and sells for $3,495. The optional rack mount goes for $99.95. A 50-disc set of the TuffCoat Archival DVD media costs $62.50.