Losing the data in your personal digital assistant, or PDA, is not fun. Whether it's the contact information of clients and colleagues, the settings of a supply management system program or utility meter reading records, losing the data in the PDA can cause serious problems for you and the business for which you work. Thankfully, a wide variety of data backup options are available for PDA users.
Proprietary Desktop Software
PDA data backups can be made directly onto your hard drive with a number of proprietary programs that work for multiple PDA devices.
According to the Sprite Backup company website, 18 million people have used the Sprite Backup for PDA data backup. Sprite Backup is available for Windows Mobile users. Sprite Clone is for businesses looking to give PDAs with identical content to employees, and Sprite Terminator can remotely delete all content on your PDA in the event that it is lost or stolen.
Another option is Spb Backup. This program creates compressed files, which save hard drive space, of your PDA's data directly on your computer and can be set to make the backups automatically.
Free Desktop Software
In addition to Windows, Apple and manufacturer-created operating systems, some PDAs run on Linux, so it's little surprise that some free, open-source data backup programs are available.
DirSync Pro is available for free download and is compatible for PDAs with Windows, Apple and Linux operating systems and backing up the data via USB cord. FlyBackUp is another cross-platform free program, but holds a limit of 50 backups.
As with most free and open-source software, no technical assistance or warranty is offered for free PDA backup desktop software.
Online Backup
Even with file compression, every hard drive has its size limits and sometimes hard drives crash, too. So a number of online PDA backup options keep your data stored on a third-party server either free or with a paid subscription.
