Guard-Drive is powered by Mercury Online Backup - the latest in the twenty-two year long history from the company who invented the Online Backup Business, Remote Backup Systems. RBS operates only through Channels, and sells customized and branded software only to Service Providers. So, if you are an end user, you may never have heard of them. Many of the largest (and smallest) Online Backup service providers in 64 countries are powered by RBS software, under thousands if different brand names.

Native Code, Co-Developed Unlike many other Online Backup products, Mercury (Guard-Drive) runs in native code on Windows (2000 and up) and Mac (10.4 and up). Native Code means that it runs faster, with far lower resource usage than other products. Also unlike other products, the PC and Mac versions of Mercury were co-developed simultaneously by in-house teams working side by side, and released at the same time. Mac versions were a minor afterthought for other companies, released many months (sometimes years) after their Windows product.

Simple and Powerful When RBS designed Mercury, they looked around at all the other products on the market (including their own) and listened to all the complaints about what features they didn't have, or how hard they were to operate. Then they started from scratch to come up with something that was both simple to operate, and had advanced features that were available for power users, but not necessary for people who just wanted something to install and forget.

Thin Agent The client-side of Mercury runs on your computer. It consists of a single executable agent which is less than 13MB in size. The Mercury Agent runs in the background, monitoring the files on your computer, and backing them up to the remote Mercury Server.

Encryption & Security When the Agent detects a changed file, it compresses and encrypts it (using an encryption key that you can optionally select), and then transmits it offsite to one of several Mercury Servers in secure data centers. The data transmission is secured over the Internet using 128-256 bit EV-SSL, the most secure Internet tunneling protocol available. Primary file encryption uses the Blowfish 448-bit algorithm.

Data Center Security Files are stored in the data centers in the same highly redundant, high reliability, high security file system used by the largest and most security-conscious companies and governments in the world. Your files are stored in their compressed and encrypted state. If you use your own Encryption Key, your files are so secure that NOBODY (not Arcam Engineering, not RBS - NOBODY) can read them without your Encryption Key. Your Encryption Key stays on your computer. Mercury never transmits it to the Data Center or anywhere else.

Automatic Updates The Mercury Agent periodically communicates with the Mercury Server to see if there are any software updates, or to find out if you have changed anything in your User Portal that needs to be updated on your computer. Software updates are applied automatically.

CPU & Bandwidth Throttling The Mercury Agent is very light on resource usage. However, if you want to adjust it further, it has slider controls that let you throttle CPU and bandwidth usage.

Default Settings The Guard-Drive version of Mercury comes pre-set with certain default features and settings, file selections and file retention settings that Arcam Engineering has decided is best for most people. You can change these settings to suite your needs.

File Selection In its simplest mode, file selection is automatic. The Guard-Drive Agent will back up the most common file types in common locations, and will ignore system files, temporary files, and other files that don't need to be backed up. Guard-Drive has been pre-programmed for all the most popular applications on both Windows and Mac.

You can adjust the default file settings by specifically selecting files and folders, and by defining filters to select files by application type, regardless where they are in any folder structure.

File Retention Guard-Drive has also been preset with file retention defaults. You can change these, too. Guard-Drive can be set to keep any number of versions of your files for any length of time from just seven days up to ten years.

Point-In-Time-Restores The advanced file retention protocol in Mercury allows you to easily do very sophisticated point-in-time restores.

Advanced Search in Restore Guard-Drive lets you search for files to restore by any combination of part of a filename, part of a folder name, most recent version, files backed up before, after, or between dates, and file type.

In-Agent Restores + Web Restores + Cross Platform You can restore files to the same computer from which they were backed up, and you can also log into your web-based user portal and restore to any other computer. You can even restore files to a Mac that were backed up from a PC, and to a PC that were backed up from a Mac.

Deleting Files Guard-Drive lets you delete files from the Mercury Server manually. You might want to do this to free up more space for backups, or if you have accidentally backed up the wrong files. Of course, Guard-Drive gives you all kinds of warnings before deleting files, to make sure you know you are deleting them.

Continuous Data Protection or Daily Backups You can select from two scheduling options - Continuous Data Protection (CDP) or a once-daily backup. CDP is the default. It tracks changes to files as you edit them, and backs them up while you use your computer on a schedule that you can set from every fifteen minutes to every twelve hours.

You can also decide to have Guard-Drive back up your files once a day, at a time that you can select. Many people like this option because it saves storage space and computer resources, especially if they use a laptop that isn't connected to the Internet all the time. They usually set backups to start during the night time when they aren't using the computer, leaving it turned on and connected to the Internet.

Shutdown or Logoff After Backup For users who prefer to schedule a single daily backup, there are two other options. You can have your computer shut down automatically after the backup, or log off after the backup.

Easy Reinstallation to Another Computer Guard-Drive has a built-in migration feature in its web-based user console that easily allows you migrate your Guard-Drive installation AND your Guard-Drive account to a different computer. The migration will disable Guard-Drive on your old computer by remote (even if you don't have access to it, if it is broken or lost), and install it on your new computer, with full access to restore your files.

Getting Help Technical Support for Guard-Drive is provided by Remote Backup Systems, the developers of the Mercury Online Backup platform. A dedicated support staff works in RBS' Chennai, India office from 8AM to 8PM US Central Time.

Most support is done through an online system that keeps track of support tickets, which you can operate on the Web or by email. There's a live online chat system, an automatic troubleshooter (answer a series of yes/no questions to find your answer), a searchable knowledge base, and online user's manual. Technicians can even take control of your computer (only with your permission, of course, when you click a link) to assist you by remote control.

You will find all the Help resources in the Help section of your User Console.