Additional Information

Data-Assurance is compatible with the following operating system environments: Windows 9x, XP Home, XP Professional, NT 4.0, 2000 Server and Professional, 2003 Server, and Novell Netware.

Once installed, Data-Assurance requires little to no network configuration in order to establish a network connection to the secure storage server. Data-Assurance utilizes Port 308 for communication, thus some hardware or software firewalls may need to be configured to allow traffic.

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Home>> Overview >> Performing Backups

Performing Backups with Data-Assurance

FloppiesOnce Data-Assurance is installed and the user's data is selected, backups may be performed manually by clicking the Backup Now icon in the main screen of the application. However, most Data-Assurance backups are performed according to the schedule configured by the user. Should the user's Internet connection be unavailable or down during the scheduled backup session, Data-Assurance will retry the connection twelve times until successfully connecting to the secure storage server. The number of retries may be increased by the user. Data-Assurance does not need to be open to backup on schedule.

During the first backup of a file, Data-Assurance compresses a full copy of the file, encrypts the compressed file with a 448 BIT "Blowfish" encryption algorithm, and transmits the compressed and encrypted file to the user's private storage folder on Data-Assurance’s secure storage server. During ensuing backups of the file, if the file has not changed since the previous backup it will be skipped during the backup procedure as "unchanged." If the file has changed since the previous backup, Data-Assurance will detect the location of the change and backup this "patch" within the file (the "patch" will be compressed and encrypted prior to transmission). Data-Assurance retains changes to the file as distinct historical versions of the file. Typically, "patch" processing for a changed file requires significantly less time than the original full backup of the file.

File Type
Orginal Size

Changed File Size

Patch Size
%
Windows
BMP 8-Bit
307,514
308278
2,615
0.85%
Microsoft Word v7.0
431,616
448,512
13,598
9.4%
Microsoft Excel v7.0
108,544
114,176
5,915
5.18%
Microsoft Access v2.0
1,802,240
1,807,940
5,700
0.32%
Intuit QuickBooks
1,265,664
1,301,504
8,074
0.62%
Photoshop File
515,473
524,769
4,480
0.85%
Plain Text File
37,084
39,123
1,285
3.28%
The chart demonstrates that typical changes made on over 4MB of business data are compressed into Patches that total less than 1% of the size of the changed files. This minimizes bandwidth requirements for backup and reduces storage costs.

More about "Patch" Processing

Data-Assurance uses FastBIT™ technology to perform "patch" processing on backed up files. FastBIT™ is truly the core technology behind Data-Assurance. The patching process compares two different versions of the same file and extracts the differences between the two files. When the differences are extracted from the two files, they are saved into a new file and compressed into what is known as a Patch. The patch file is often 85% to 99.9% smaller than the original file from which it was extracted.

The FastBIT™ patching process manipulates files at the binary level. Different types of files will yield different FastBIT™ patch sizes based on the binary organization of the file. The chart featuring theFastBIT™ statistics illustrate this point further:


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