Palm Pre True Backup Solution In the Works?

During the age of the Palm OS, there have always been complaints about backup. At the time, Palm had a wonderful program called "Hotsync" which could easily backup all your information (including Contacts, Calendars, Media, Apps, you name it!).  The catch to this, however, was that the phone had to be hooked up (usually via USB) to a computer and depending on the amount of your data, the waiting time was immeasurable. This caused a lot of distress to most users, not to mention Palm's desktop sync software aptly named "Palm Desktop" which had its own issues. A lot of people swore by this method, however, I was not satisfied.




Then came WebOS. WebOS brought with it the fantastical ideas of saving all your information on the "cloud". It promised new hope where your phone would automagically save all your information to a secure server overnight, so you would not have to do it manually, nor would you have to sit there and wait. Gone are the days of SD cards, and onboard memory tie downs, in light of remote (theoretically infinite) space to save all your information. Personally speaking, I was very excited about this opportunity.



Then came the harrowing reality. Palm decided to let the phone pick and choose what information gets backed up. Not to mention, you have no access to this backed up information. You essentially let the phone do its thing and if, Heaven forbid, anything were to happen to your Pre and you were to get a replacement, you would simply log into your account and whatever data happened to have been backed up would be restored. The problem is that a lot of users have been complaining that their data is missing, incomplete, or simply not there.



Programs such as Companion Link and PocketMirror attempted at resolving these issues, however, none have really caught on as the new savior of back up solutions.



Over at PreCentral, there's a new solution "brewing". A very resourceful developer known as DrewPre at the PreCentral forums has been working on a solution that pulls out all the necessary information (you can choose what information is necessary) and packages it up in a nice little zip package (tar.gz). This opens up fantastic new possibilities. You can now keep a backup of only the information you want, and store it wherever you see fit. Be it your Hard Drive, an SD card, or a USB drive and keep it with you, safe and secure.


Some screenshots of DrewPre's work (not yet released for Beta testing) below:

If you would like to follow DrewPre's work, watch this thread at PreCentral.

It would be interesting to see how this little gem is received, how long it takes, and how easy the data is manageable once retreived.



Keep on, keepin' on DrewPre!