Review: ClickFree Wireless

The ClickFree Wireless 500GB offers an easy back-up solution for the less technically-minded.

Not backing up your PC is like trying rollerblading for the first time - sooner or later you're going to fall flat on your behind, it will hurt, a lot, and you will feel quite stupid.

With everything now digital, documents, spreadsheets and emails are joined by music, video and photos, all of which - aside from often being irreplaceable - are taken for granted until a hard drive failure or malware nukes them into digital oblivion.

The trouble is that avoiding this unfortunate state of affairs by doing regular backups is that it is about as much fun (and as difficult) as a DIY cranial lobotomy (that's assuming you don't have a doctorate in applied computer sciences).

ClickFree have now produced Wireless - a backup solution that's simple enough to be near idiot proof (well it worked for me anyways).

It mightn't be the fastest solution in town but is incredibly simple to set up and being wireless means the ClickFree drive can be stored anywhere there is both power and Wi-Fi coverage.

Look and Feel

Aesthetically, The ClickFree Wireless probably has more in common with one of the black monoliths from Arthur C Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey than other USB backup devices in that it is rectangular and black.

The liberal use of black plastic is both seamless and shiny, making it a real fingerprint magnet. There's also an embedded USB cable tucked into the ClickFree's rear plus a power socket for when the device is used as a stand alone wireless backup drive.

In Use

Being a wireless beastie, backups can be done for any computer that is wirelessly connected to your local area network. Where things get really impressive, however, is the sheer simplicity of getting it set up and.

Popping the USB cable out of the ClickFree's rear and connecting it to a spare USB port on a PC results in the ClickFree backup application being fired up (which is stored on a partition on the drive), it then stores your PC's wireless network settings. After completing a full system-wide back-up you're prompted to disconnect the ClickFree which will then wirelessly do incremental backups (e.g. only backing up files that have changed since the last full back up) of the PC it was connected to.

As it doesn't need a physically wired connection, the ClickFree can be stored out of sight, provided there is solid wireless coverage and power. This process can also be repeated across multiple PCs, making ClickFree Wireless a complete no brainer those who want a backup done as simply as possible.

Performance

While the ClickFree is a dead easy set-and-forget solution, being wireless means it won't win any prizes for speed. Having accepted the default schedule of 3am for performing incremental backups, speed isn't really an issue, especially as the scheduled backups are incremental, representing a fairly small amount of data.

The ClickFree Wireless drives are not the only backup solutions available (but they are considerably cheaper than the functionally similar Time Capsule from Apple), but I couldn't help but think that you could do quite a bit more with a fully fledged network attached storage drive.

But this said, backing up doesn't get much simpler than a ClickFree Wireless which at $274 for a 500GB drive, represents pretty solid value for money.

ClickFree Wireless
$274

Tech Specs
Networking: Wi-Fi 802.11g, 802.11n
Backup software: ClickFree
Capacity: 500GB (1TB also available)