A Poor Man's Amazon S3 Storage

Amazon has a very useful online storage system called S3. Cucku allows you to turn your home computer or the computer of someone you know into a personal version of Amazon's S3. While I may not use this for high-value content, it certainly is an effective means for creating an off-site backup.

Cucku is not the first application to allow this type of work to be done. What I like about Cucku is that it's easy to use, secured, and includes built-in backups. There are plenty of secure connections -- VPNs -- and plenty of backup systems, but not many easy-to-use combinations of the two. With hard drive space being plentiful and home Internet access fast, Cucku makes a lot of sense for the cash-strapped school. Just make sure there is no policy about staff taking school data off-site before starting a backup routine.

Cucku is also a great solution for backing up laptops. One interesting point is that Cucku uses Skype for transferring files. That's a creative way to utilizes a dependable peer-to-peer network. It does mean, however, that you will need to have Skype installed. Unfortunately, Cucku only works on XP and Vista.

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JungleDisk

Online storage is something I've been interested in for quite some time. It combines the pluses of off-site storage with a backup system that can be performed routinely. The old way I did off-site storage was to make an extra set of tapes and take those tapes home. That worked, but had many potential weaknesses.

I've played -- and blogged -- on a number of online storage providers. Some were too expensive and others went out business. And yet others had complicated menu structures that left me wondering what, if anything, had taken place.

In comes Amazon. In addition to books and garden supplies, Amazon now offers various computer resources. Unlike their consumer business, Amazon doesn't make their services easy for the common person to use. A number of providers have come into build in user friendliness into Amazon's offerings. One such provider is JungleDisk. They have one of the nice packages of services built on Amazon. One of the things I appreciate is that even if JungleDisk goes out of business, your organization's data continues to reside on Amazon.

I'm planning on using JungleDisk for my organization. Where I see it as being very useful is with staff with laptops. With online storage, it does not matter where the devices are as long as there is an Internet connection.

One of the things I like most about what I've seen with JungleDisk is their understandable pricing plan. This has not been my experience with other online providers. I hope to be back to post more.

Stay tuned...

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1 Terabyte Drives

The arrival of the new one-terabyte drives is just one reminder of how fast storage capacity is growing. The one-terabyte limit seems like a significant milestone.

What does this mean? Well, it means server storage can be consolidated and it means that information needs not be moved off to archives or deleted. It also allows you to store videos and other storage hogs on the hard drive.

As this trend continues, we may seen entirely new patterns for backing up data and in what we store on the disks. While this will probably be a good overall change, the sheer size of the data stored will become a burden on other aspects of the computer -- and to our ability to make sense from all the information at our finger tips.

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Backup4All

I've been testing out Backup4all's professional backup tool. I have to say that it has worked well and provides useful ways to look at stored data. While virtually all backup programs will do a good job of backing up, not all have good interfaces. It's not free, but at $50 for the professional version, it's close enough.

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Hamachi for Off-site Backups

This is not the first time I've written fondly of Hamachi. While it is especially popular with gamers because it creates a local network between players in remote locations, I've recently been able to use its file sharing feature along with my standard backup utility.

The main problem with off-site backups is getting the information some place safe without the hassle of carrying multiple CDs or DVDs. A USB device isn't large enough and carrying around an external hard disk isn't very appealing.

There are some online storage areas, but nothing is so wonderful that I can recommend it. I suspect this will change over the coming year. Hamachi is a free software application that creates a secure network between a number of computers. This can be two computers or hundreds.

Last night I turned on the capability of sharing local drives. I then mapped the remote main drive of my remote server and then used my backup program as I would normally. Naturally, this is not a fast way to backup, but it's as fast as an online storage system and there are no storage fees. If you're like me, you have plenty of extra space on your local hard drive.

One last thing, it would be a good idea to encrypt the folder you plan on saving the backups. You don't want to take a chance with your data being exposed from your computer. As for the connection during the transfer process, Hamachi is more than secure enough for that. One last thing: Hamachi runs on Linux and OS X, as well as on Windows.

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MediaMax: Online Data Backup

MediaMax, formerly Streamload, is offering 25 gigs of free data storage. The features look great and the storage amount of 25 gigs is better than anything else I've seen. I've been using it for several weeks now and while it has come in handy, the software does not always work -- at least not in a way that I recognize as working. The application screen can get stuck in a mode that appears to be frozen, but the processor stats tell me that it's working like crazy. I cannot recommend using this system at this point in time but I'm going to activity follow this product so that when it becomes more solid and easier to understand, I'll be ready to use it.

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The Free Online Backup Site You Already Own

In July I posted on Microsoft's new FolderShare program. FolderShare allows you to synchronize data from one computer directory to one or more other computers.

One of the nice features of this system is that it takes advantage of the fact that most computers have more than enough storage space. There is no reason to pay some firm to store data online when your home computer is sitting there with lots of extra space and an always-on broadband connection.

Since July I've been using FolderShare and have found that it works well for simple file sharing. FolderShare pretty limited when compared to true backup systems. It can only handle ten libraries or packages of data. This may not sound too restrictive until you find out that it cannot share an entire drive letter. So, if your data is all under drive D, you cannot make a share out of drive D. You must go into the sub-directories and share them separately -- and be under ten. This is possible for small organizations and for individuals. Of course, one could set up multiple FolderShare accounts, but that might become too complex.

One great use of FolderShare is as a method for backing up laptop data. Install FolderShare on a laptop and then invite your home or office to share the data. Whenever the laptop is online FolderShare will make sure any new files will be transferred.

I suspect that FolderShare's features will improve in the near future. Google will most likely come out with some file storage system that will force everyone else in the market to respond. BTW, you need to be extra careful of the computers you backup to. I would recommend encrypting the directories you store your data. You don't want the data to be accidentally exposed. And, as you might expect, FolderShare is only for Windows.

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FreeNAS for Cheap and Reliable File Storage

FreeNAS is close to releasing product-quality code for their BSD UNIX based Network Attached Storage software. First of all, I have to say I'm a big fan of BSD. While it is often confused with Linux, it is actually a branch of UNIX. Because of this, it has some security and reliability aspects that Linux distributions don't always have. The BSD distributions tend to be unkillable and very difficult to hack into. The main problem for new users has the ease of configuration and operation. FreeNAS removes this problem by providing a web interface and an automated installation process.

This software can function on a low-end computer -- it requires only 16 megs of RAM. You probably don't want to go with an extremely old computer simply because hard drive performance will be important. CPU and the amount of RAM are secondary considerations. But, if you are planning on using this storage device for archival or backup purposes, then even an older computer with a big drive will work wonders.

While the device may be single-minded in what it does, it has many ways to do its job. It can be access over the Internet and on a local area network by Linux, Windows and Mac computers.

If you are looking for low-cost storage, you cannot go far wrong with this system.

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External Hard Disk Enclosure

There are many ways to store data externally. In a school there are many good reasons to use external storage. For one, the student may take it from computer to computer. Another advantage is that the school can lock up the devices in a secured area at night. What makes the WiebeTech enclosure special is that it is built for rough use and for fast connection speeds.

These units would be excellent for a multimedia lab, storing sensitive information, and for backups. Just remember to use encryption if you are storing sensitive information. These devices are portable.

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Continuous Data Protection

Corporations have long had a variety of methods for backing up data in real time. Naturally, a lost document after a day's work can be more than you would like to put at risk. IBM is selling a program that can backup files continuously to either a network drive or to a USB flash device. The specs look good and IBM certainly has a good reputation in the data protection/recovery market. Worth taking a look.

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IBM Tivoli Continuous Data Protection for Files - Product overview: "Continuously back up crucial corporate data on file servers and transiently connected machines"

FolderShare: Take your work with you

One problem teachers have is that the school may not give them network storage. So, they either have to copy files from place to place or haul around a laptop. FolderShare allows you to transfer and/or share files between multiple computers. Looks like a possible solution to a very tired problem.

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FolderShare.com - sync files, sync folders, transfer files, share files, web download, access files: "FolderShare: Specializing in remote access and file sync allowing you to keep your files sync'd over the Internet & LAN, share files with others, and web download access to your files."

Top 10 Reasons Why Online Backup is Replacing Tape,

Here is a follow-up posting to the on-line storage idea. If you liked the idea and need some justification points, this article may be very helpful. This is a vendor white paper, but that does not mean it does not contain valid information -- you just don't get the counterpoints.

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Top 10 Reasons Why Online Backup is Replacing Tape, from LiveVault - White Papers, Webcasts and Case: "Your most important asset - your corporate data - is far too valuable to entrust to cumbersome tape processes, unreliable backup media, and painstakingly slow recoveries. Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are rapidly turning to online backup and recovery to displace older, manual, less reliable tape backup. In fact, a staggering 76.5% of IT professionals plan to change the way they do backup over the next 18 months. "