You take one end of the USB cable and insert it into the Clickfree box, then take the other end and insert it into your computer. You’re done. That’s it. There’s no buttons to press, no mice to click, no software to install, no options or settings to select. Like an espionage toy from the movies, the Clickfree box does all the work, installing itself and automatically scanning the computer it’s connected to for a shopping list of file types and copying them onto its own hard drive.
There’s a little window that will appear on the monitor to show you what it’s up to, so you can at least watch it while it works. It sifts through each file directory, looking for file extensions that match. Documents, e-mails, pictures, photos, spreadsheets, music files, browser bookmarks, anything user-generated it takes an immediate interest in and stores a copy. Homework, office projects, tax returns, it will attempt to copy as much as it can. In my case it grabbed over 130 Gigabytes of data from my computer.
There are two downsides, the first being that it only works on Windows XP and Vista machines (a Mac version is in the works), the second being that the process can take awhile, at least for the first time you use it. My first backup took ten hours to complete. There’s a lot of scanning and a lot of copying and it depends how much data you have stored on your computer. Your PC at work, limited to just documents and spreadsheets may only take a few hours while your computer at home, full of family photos and music files, will probably match my own experience. That time span drops rapidly when you connect the Clickfree box for an update. Having already copied your computer once, it merely looks for files that have since changed and uses them to replace its own copies. My second backup took just forty-five minutes, so using the Clickfree system to maintain a regular back-up shouldn’t take up too much of your productivity time.
Once the process is complete, it will display a summary report, listing all of the different files types it found and how much space they take up. You can simply disconnect the device or you can choose to explore the copied content using the Clickfree menu, which is laid out in the same file directory format as on your computer, in fact the photos are displayed with thumbnails just as they are in Windows Explorer. Using a search menu, you can quickly locate a file or groups of files by search word and access them just as you would a file from an external hard drive.
Since you can’t leave everything up to an automatic process, there is an options menu with settings you can use to customize the backup process. You might find Clickfree’s approach a little too comprehensive or alternately you might find it ignoring a set of file types. You can view the list of file extensions it looks for in its scanning, removing ones you don’t need while adding new ones not listed, or you can browse and add complete folders or directories to its list, to copy them in their entirety.
Using Clickfree to restore back-up files is done with just two options. You can choose to have the entire backup restored to your computer or you can use the summary menu to browse or search for specific files and right-click to choose the restore option for it, just as you would if it were sitting in your Recycle Bin.
The Clickfree drives are sold in two storage sizes; 120 GB at $130, and 160 GB at $160, and as long as you have enough free space, you can use it to backup multiple computers. At the summary screen at the end of the process, there’s a quick drop-down menu that allows you to switch between computer names to view the stored content from each PC.
One popular option Clickfree doesn’t cater to are scheduled backups. Most back-up systems, both hardware products and online services, offer the option for their products to perform their back-ps at a specific time, usually in the middle of the night while you are away and your computer is not in use. With Clickfree, the onus is on you to actively pull it out of your drawer or storage area and use it on a regular basis.
In design, the device is merely a hard drive wrapped in chrome-plated plastic. It has two LEDs, one to show power the other to show that the discs are spinning. Although in my tests it drew enough power through its mini-USB connection, it also includes a DC outlet port for an optional adapter and a USB cable with three plugs, so that you can plug it into two USB ports on your PC for additional power if needed.
Clickfree is an easy, thorough backup system, but as a device it offers lightweight protection. Its plastic casing won’t stand up to much abuse, it’s not something you want to accidentally step on or get crushed under a pile of gear. I can recommend its use, but also recommend that you find a safe place to store it or invest in a special storage box like the shockproof ones offered by Otterbox or Pelican.
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