...and then it was gone
by Gary Woods

Anybody who knows me knows that I'm crazed about backing up my data. I back up every piece of data in our whole house every week. That backup includes what's on my PDA, but this is an area that even people who back everything else up seem to forget.

If a PDA is left unplugged it will lose all it's memory in a very few days even if it's turned off, so backing that data up is essential. For people who use the Palm Operating System and have a SD (Secure Digital) slot on their device there's a real quick answer.

A UK-based firm called Proporta Ltd. Has 3 cards from 32 to 128 MB and a backup couldn't be easier. Simply push the card into your Palm's SD slot, and the ProBackup software that lives on the card automatically loads and displays two buttons: Back-up and Restore. If it's the first time you've used it in any machine, it will take a little longer to backup than subsequent uses because after the first usage it makes incremental back-ups, copying over only the files or programs that have changed since the last backup.

The time and date of your last backup displays at the top of its screen, along with a progress bar and a quickly scrolling list that tells you what it's doing when you press either button.

Proporta ProBackup www.proporta.com $49.95 for (128 MB), $33.45 (32 MB).

If you have any suggestions or questions for me please drop me a note at garyandlaury@santabarbaraproperties.com or see my column on the Internet at http://www.santabarbaraproperties.com or call me at (805) 729-0910