In the world of online Backup there is many companies who offer the ability to backup all your data to the cloud and you can sleep at night safe in the knowledge that even in the event of loosing all your local storage (fire, theft or whatever), you can always get your files back. Mozy used to cost a simple $4.95 a month and with this you could back up as much data as you seen fit. Other Providers for example let you choose a directory but in fact stripped out Video files, ISO files and so forth – so there complete backup was not so complete after all. Mozy have now dropped the unlimited data plan and we have $5.95 a month for 50GIG Data or $9.99 for 125GIG. People are up in arms – how dare they restrict what we backup and why did they offer unlimited in the first place?

What is unlimited?

I shall use an analogy here, imagine I said you can drive your car as much as you like and as far as you like, Unlimited if you will. Of course we all know that a car need fuel to make it go anywhere and at some stage you would have to stop to get some more – but you can still do what I said in the first line right? Many Services such as Broadband providers, Web Hosting services, Mobile Phone providers and Backup providers are saying “You can use our service Unlimited” but at some point along the way you find out it is not in fact unlimited and you are restricted.

In the case of Broadband, they can share a fast line with so many people with the thought that not everyone will be on at the exact same time. When people all leave the computers grabbing files 24/7 – soon the providers has to put some restrictions on there and what they do is slow you down in fact – at this point you can still use the service “Unlimited” – just not as fast as you would have hoped.

In the case of WebHosting, much the same as above and we all agree there is no such thing as an Unlimited Harddrive on sale just yet right? In the real world people do not Back up 800GIG worth of data – that’s just a silly amount. 

What should people be backing up?

On the average Windows Computer in front of you now, if you wiped it clean and rebuilt ir from scratch without backing anything up – ask yourself “What have I just lost?” The reality is that The operating system is on a DVD (or should be) as well as your applications, what you should have left that is not there is any documents, picture’s, videos and music.

If you are of legal standing – all your music should be around still on them old things called cd’s and anything you bought in iTunes can be downloaded again. I am not sure what Videos people have lying around, I am guessing stuff they have recorded themselves but if you can apply compression and get the size down anyhow and do you really need to watch something you recorded three years ago? This leaves documents and such.

The free Solution

There is many free services while allow you to automatically back up all your ‘normal’ files such as DropBox for example. These services only give you 2 GIG or data but you can buy more if needed or you can sign up for a few different one’s and back up that way.

How do Business Backup?

In a business, everything is stored on a server and we are talking a lot of data. This data is stored on RAID 5type arrays which means if a drive fails – you can insert a new one and everything will be all fine. Expanding on this of course is Tape Backup – Each night a backup is run which takes all the Data you specify and places this on a Tape. The complete set of tapes is taken offsite each night so in the event the whole building is burned to the ground – all the data is still safe and sound. As Tapes are done each day, you can go back days, weeks or even months to find the right files to restore.

Storing it everywhere

In my collection, I have two NAS Boxes, one with 4TB internal and 1TB external (USB) while the Other NAS has 1TB Internal and 1TB External (eSATA). My Music collection is backed up to the other NAS, if I loose One NAS, I still can have my entire Music collection – very slim chance for both drives to go at the exact same time.

I have a vast collection of Wallpapers – again this is split across two drives and it is stored in effect on my Gallery I use for this site, so we can rule out loose them anytime soon. What we have left is movies, now if I lost them, this is no major concern or something to loose sleep over. The one’s I have made are stored on various video websites such as YouTube and such and personally, not worth worrying about anyway.   

Another idea for Backup?

A couple of Idea’s here really:

One idea is to have an external harddrive which are quite cheap these days and run a program to sync your drives to this one. You can then take this drive and pop it in your bag and take it with you when you go to work (though constant moving an external hard drive might kill it sooner than later). This is like an Offsite backup if you like.

Next idea is to find a friend who is prepared to set up an online backup service but once again moving 800GIG over two broadband connections is going to take you months to back it all up.

Bottom Line

You as a person need to ask yourself what data is really important and what you cannot live without. Hard drives will eventually fail and DVD media will get scratched but do you really need to Backup 800GIG and how often is this changing anyhow?

I have been looking into NAS and this one device I have seen which interests me. The website is HERE and we shall go through what it is, what it does and why you might want one (or something similar). First of all let us explain that NAS is Network attached Storage and this allows a box dedicated to sharing space across the network so that any computer can get at the information stored. Some boxes just share the drives but some come with a whole range of extras such as Web Server, Torrent client and iTunes Server.

What is a NAS

While there is nothing to stop you from setting up a machine and sharing the drives, do you really want a full blown desktop computer humming away and eating electricity just to share some files? What is much better is a small dedicated box hidden away in the corner with a lot of storage space. Add to this RAID and you have some sort of protection if the drives goes bad – but this depends on what type of RAID you choose.

What else can this do?

The main thing here which might be worth pointing out would be for example the iTunes Server – you can have one central place for all your tunes and the computer will see them. I have tested this myself with FreeNAS but I personally proffered a shared directory and adding them to each iTunes.

On the back we have a USB port – this can be used as either a USB Printer or another Harddrive for even more storage. The Fan you see will be making some noise but should power down as the unit is not needed.

Limits of this device

While the device is very cheap (£117.49 from Aria) there is some limits on this device. It supports a maximum of 1.5TB Drive per bay – so the Max Capacity will be 3GIG – this will go down once formatted of course and it would be wise to pick two drive of the same capacity for proper RAID. It does support JBOD (Just a Bunch of Drives) which added all the capacity up and presents it as one drive – it uses the first drive then the second as it fills up. If one drives goes – you have lost everything in JBOD mode, so be careful.

While Intel’s Atom has a near-monopoly on the netbook market, that’s not the only place the processor will be practicing its power-miserly ways. Intel launched at CeBit its first Atom processor-based platform optimized for networked home and small office/home office (SOHO) storage devices.

The energy-efficient platform consists of the Atom processor D410 single-core or D510 dual-core and the 82801IR I/O Controller to run network-attached storage (NAS) devices that organize, manage, protect and share documents, photos, videos and music.

The new platform features six PCI Express lanes, 12 USB 2.0 ports, a port multiplier function and eSATA ports that give OEMs the ability to add peripheral devices and expand storage capacity outside of the box. It also features hot plug capabilities for easy capacity upgrades and an integrated gigabit Ethernet MAC controller for improved data transfers to and from the home server or small office NAS device.

“NAS systems have traditionally been found in businesses to manage, store and access data,” said Seth Bobroff, general manager, Intel Data Center Group, Storage. “Today, households and small offices have an ever-increasing number of computers, laptops, netbooks and mobile phones that create and consume digital content. This advancement in mobility coupled with the explosive growth of data and media are creating the need for centralized, easy-to-use network storage solutions for the home and small office.”

LaCie, LG Electronics, QNAP, Synology and Thecus are signed on as product partners for Intel’s platform.