TECH SWEETSPOT
by Manel Sweetmore

In this first article I want to address something none of us want to think about and typically don’t deal with until it is too late. Backup! All of us do backups (well almost all of us), just not regularly enough because it is laborious and we have to remember to do it! When disaster does happen it always seems to happen at the worst time.

The solution is mindless backup… set it and forget it. The simplest way to implement this is with a Mirra box. This is an appliance that you plug into your network, install client software on each machine you want to back-up, tell the software what you want to backup (it comes pre-configured for the typical set-up) and you are done. Now every time each of the configured computer is connected to the network (wired or wireless) all files that have changed are backed up automatically, on the fly, in the background. One additional feature this type of set-up is that it backs up multiple versions of each file. Have you ever saved a spreadsheet and realized that you just lost hours of information that you needed? Don’t worry… with multiple version backup the information is not lost! Within minutes you can retrieve anywhere up to the last 8 versions of the file you were working on. This setup is a must have for home office and/or small business. The Mirra is available in varying sizes of storage capacity and the limitation is not the number of computers that it can support but the amount of data that needs to be backed up from each. One additional feature is that all the backed up files are accessible over the internet in case you don’t have your computer with you. One can even share files (such as photos) with friends and family. I haven’t found this feature to be very user friendly but it is available.

For the power user who wants a few more features and is willing to take the time for a little more configuration a similar solution can be put in place by purchasing the hardware and software independently. The key additional benefits of build your own set-up is that you also get a network drive that is available to all computers on the network (some set-ups are compatible with both PC’s and Mac’s); an FTP server; a media server (basically a way to make all your audio and video files available to all computers and your home stereo – more info on this on a future article). To achieve this you need to purchase the hardware – a shared network drive – and auto backup software separately. The price of the extra features is extra complexity. Although I haven’t personally had any problems some of the reviews on shared network drives report slowness and difficulty setting up the shared drives. I recommend one of the Linkstation products from Buffalo Technologies. Although they are a bit more expensive, they have the best reputation and feature set (the recent Pro version seems to address the speed concerns of some users). For the software I recommend Memeo (included with Linkstation products). The software also provides additional features such as encryption and backup to other devices such as a removable drive, iPod, or online service -- providing the ability for off site backups.

If you are an entrepreneur or mobile professional that doesn’t have all of their important data backed up by an IT department putting an automated backup solution in place should be one of your top priorities.