Products from Ispiri, D-Link and Seagate provide much-needed consumer storage options.
All I wanna know is: What took so long? I’ve got personal digital files – music, photos, Web pages, articles, art, e-books, whatever – scattered all over the place. Most live on my work system (where they don’t belong) or are burned on CDs by my son, who gives them titles like: “For Mom! Because I love you!” While I appreciate the sentiment, that sure doesn’t tell me what’s on the disk.
What we need, of course, is a home server – a central storage repository for making all our stuff easy to organize and share, as well as a place to back up our important work and school documents. In his Digital Domicile column this week, Mike Wolf declares once and for all, the home server won’t be the residential gateway. And right on cue, the first home servers come marching to market, from start-up Ispiri and D-Link. And Seagate’s got an external hard disk that fits the bill, too.
The most interesting offering comes from Ispiri, a start-up founded by Tim Bucher, a former Microsoft and WebTV executive who currently serves as vice president of Macintosh Systems at Apple. The device, called Mirra, is meant to sit alongside your broadband modem/residential gateway, and includes an Ethernet port and four USB ports. When you plug in Mirra, it uses a proprietary protocol to discover other PCs on the network. Due out next month, the 5400 rpm 80G-byte version will cost $400 and the 120G-byte version, $500. If you need to expand, the USB ports are meant for daisy-chaining external hard disks.
The price is good, but added features could make it great. Included back-up and restore software saves up to eight versions of files. Mirra recommends the files you might want backed up (such as your e-mail’s .PST file) once, then handles the process automatically, detecting changes and synching versions. Should you delete a file off your PC, Mirra will save the file but mark it deleted until you manually delete it off the device. To restore files, just highlight them and tell Mirra to restore them to the original location. You can use Mirra to migrate your files to a new computer. Just highlight the files you want, and have Mirra restore them on the new system.
Another neat feature is the ability to access Mirra files remotely and share file access with others via its Mirra.com site. Mirra.com doesn’t keep any of your data on its site, but instead acts as a routing mechanism for users to access your Mirra device. You designate users you want to share files with by inputting their e-mail addresses; Mirra then sends a notification to the user with a link to the shared files. To access the files, the user clicks on the link and registers at Mirra.com. The remote access service is free, and the company is considering adding an offsite back-up feature.
Of course, for Ispiri to offer remote access and file sharing, its servers must keep in constant contact with your Mirra, pinging the device 5 to 10 seconds – just something to keep in mind.
Though not a home server, Seagate is offering its new External Hard Drive (great name) a Universal Plug and Play device with back-up software. Priced at $270 and $300, the 160G-byte and 200G-byte 7200 rpm devices include USB and Firewire ports; and BounceBack Express back-up software, which is based on CMS Peripherals ABSplus. You can share the drive’s contents with other PCs on the home network so long as the PC it’s connected to is always running. The 160G-byte version is available now; the 200G-byte version will be released in a few months.
Last, D-Link will ship its aptly named Media Central Home Drive (DSM-602H) next month. The 20G-byte 5400rpm hard disk device supports Windows XP, 2000, Mac OS and Linux. D-Link is touting its Universal Plug and Play support for easy installation, but the device lacks back-up software or any other tools. For $250, the value escapes me.
In the coming months, Small Business Tech columnist James Gaskin and I will be testing these, and others that are sure to follow. Stay tuned.
