HCL EC2 Technology in Leaptops

HCL recently launched some of its notebooks and desktops with a self-healing

data recovery technology called EC2. This technology promises to restore your

data within 60 seconds from a logical system crash or from virus or spyware

attacks. We received an HCL Leaptop (no, it's not a spelling error, that's what

they're called) with EC2 integrated in it. EC2 creates a snapshot of the whole

system with user data and software installed on it. If the system crash happens

or there is an accidental loss of data, users can recover the whole system and

lost data to last snapshot created.



Using EC2 is simple. Snapshots can easily be created through HCL EC2 client in
Windows and restoration can be done through EC2 BIOS interface when you boot the

system itself. You can schedule how often EC2 should take snapshots. This kind

of feature can be very useful for notebook users, when they are travelling. It's

very easy to use so even a novice can quickly learn it.

To test EC2 capabilities, we first deleted Windows critical files like

NTDETECT.COM, boot.ini, ntdlr etc and rebooted the laptop. EC2 managed to detect

the Windows crash and restored everything in less than 30 seconds to the point

where previous snapshot was taken. Then we formatted all partitions except

boot-partition and rebooted. Once again, EC2 actually managed to recover the

drive with data and took less then 60 seconds.

A point to remember is that EC2 restores data from last snapshot taken only,

so if any files were deleted before the last snapshot was taken, you won't be

able to recover them.

Bottom Line: Can help increase productivity by restoring your system

in only a few seconds, even after a severe system crash.