Ar-Tech Offers New Data Back-Up Service

Ar-Tech Computer Solutions of Rogers started offering a unique data back-up service in November.

For a fee between $39 and $129 a month, the company will bring in a computer with a large hard drive, hook it up to a client’s server and copy the data. The back-up computer is set to make a copy of the data every day. The fee range depends on the amount of data a client needs to have saved.

Once a week, an Ar-Tech representative will stop by and swap out the back-up computer. The used one goes back to the shop and the data is burned to a DVD for the client.

Rick Combs, Ar-Tech’s president, said the service will copy up to 1.2 terabytes of information and it’s much faster than tape back ups, which typically run all night. For companies with lots of data on their servers, traditional tapes will run out of room, and there’s no one on-site to change the tape overnight, Combs said. So sometimes it takes two to three days to back up one day’s worth of information.

Ar-Tech’s back-up computers are “end-of-life” Dells that Combs outfits with larger hard drives and Linux operating systems. The idea offered Combs a way to not only back up customers’ data, but also a way to “recycle” computers, he said.

The system is completely non-intrusive to a client’s server, it just “plugs in,” Combs said.

So far, Ar-Tech has five clients signed on: an engineering firm, a title company, a real estate company, an insurance and health care company, and a graphics company, Combs said.