Returning Clients Data-Software?

[Logical]

Dear all,

Would appreciate your thoughts and experience on how best to return clients data to them when they wish it sent on DVD media.

Obviously hard drive is best / easiest, but if its up to about 20gig of user files I zip or rar them spanning over 3-4 or 4-5 disks - using encryption and password.

I advise my clients on this and they have been happy with this option.

The thing is, when I burn them,(always verifying), I end up (for peace of mind) copying the rars and extracting the archive to test it works. Overkill probably but best to be sure.

What do you use when transferring and returning data to clients, and is there a more "user friendly" way to make this easier for my clients who may not be very PC literate with regard to extracting archives.

Thanks in advance.

Logical.

[lcoughey]

Out of curiosity, how much time are you spending on burning DVDs for, what I assume, free? We generally try to avoid multiple CD/DVDs as that only makes things more difficult for us to create and complicated for the client to restore. But, when we do span, we will either use the DeepSpar DVD burn that comes with DRE and OperationsServer or the built-in span function of Roxio and Nero.

[Logical]

Hi Thanks for the info, It's not the time it takes, its just the resources of one of my PC that's taken up. Also, like you say, I think it does makes it more complicated for the client if they are not PC literate.

Will investigate Roxio and Nero's functionality and test.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

Best

Logical

[CK]

Why not supply an external hard drive that's encrypted with Truecrypt to your customer? Buy in bulk and pass them on at cost price if they are price sensitive. It will save you tons of time and hassle.

[BlackST]

Everything depends on the amount of data - if they have let's say a 15 GB Desktop folder, you have to split MANUALLY on more DVDs. Ewwwww !
I offer other options, if they really want THAT media THE WAY THEY WANT, there's an extra.
Each case is different, anyway.

[fzabkar]

... is there a more "user friendly" way to make this easier for my clients who may not be very PC literate with regard to extracting archives.

Why not supply a self-extracting archive that is launched from within a BAT file? The BAT could itself be launched by autorun.inf, and the user could be prompted for the target drive and directory (or folder, if s/he's a Windows user). The BAT could check for sufficient space on the target, etc.

Linux users probably wouldn't need any hand-holding.