Whether it's hard drives or CD-ROMs, this company can make them do things you might not have realized were possible.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [November 18, 2005]

It might seem like a simple Windows OS tweak, but it is the technology that built a company. Engineer Thomas Lin, now CEO (and founder) of Irvine, Calif.-based FarStone, left Microsoft to start the company in 1993 to retail a piece of software called VirtualDrive (now in its tenth version).

The software allows gamers and others to make an image of a CD-ROM on a hard drive. The Windows OS is tricked into relating to the image as if it were an extra CD-ROM drive.

FarStone does not sell GameDrive to ISPs. We might buy GameDrive ourselves (or a related product), but would not recommend that you sell it. We would, however, recommend just about any and every security service, including FarStone's.

Security
Fast forward twelve years, and the company is now also offering products for small business, educational institutions, and governments.

The core of its security offering is RestoreIT, which saves an image of your hard drive in a separate partition so that you can return to an earlier configuration if you have problems with an install, a virus, or even a single .dll file.

Tom Fedro, FarStone vice president of sales, marketing, and operations, explains how it works. "RestoreIT creates a hidden partition on your hard disk. If you have a 60 GB hard disk (one that's not full) it might take 6 GB for the hidden partition. It takes a picture of everything on the hard disk and stores it in the partition. Only we can get to that partition. Windows cannot get to it, and viruses cannot get to it. So even if there's a blue screen of death, you can bring up RestoreIT and get going again by picking an incremental restore point, turning back the clock and going back to before the virus or the install or whatever caused your problem."

At ISPCON, FarStone announced a big customer win for RestoreIT, West Palm Beach, Fla.-based security integrator Authentium, a company that builds security bundles for major ISPs, serving over 3 million end users under the brand names of its ISP customers, which include Cox Communications and EarthLink.

Increased revenue and reduced expenses
Fedro says that ISPs derive two benefits from RetoreIT: they reduce the number and duration of support calls, and they can earn revenue by charging for the RestoreIT service.

ISPs worried about delinquent customers will be particularly pleased by FarStone's license manager. Fedro explains, "FarStone keeps track of the license at the ISP. The software makes sure customers are paid up. The ISP can turn off RestoreIT if the customer hasn't paid in a specific number of days, as determined by policies set by that ISP. The ISP can also unlock RestoreIT."

Fedro says that delinquent customers facing a blue screen of death are willing to pay several hundred dollars to restore their PCs, because that's less than the cost of reinstalling everything themselves.

Of course, good customers who are saved by RetoreIT are forever grateful.

Pricing and availability
The product is available now. Pricing was not disclosed. It currently works on Windows 2000 and XP, and the company expects to have a major Linux announcement in December.

—End