Review of the Mirra Home Backup System

Darth Fredd writes "Having trouble backing up,or just too lazy to take the time? Behold Mirra, a networked RAID 1 volume, backs up everything automagically over the network. Extreme Tech has a review. Mirra uses the insanely popular (and fun) Mini ITX form factor motherboard. Mirra is targeted at the "normal" home and desktop user." We've mentioned the Mirra before.

Comments

Doesn't anyone do market research anymore?

[sparklingfruit]

Ok "the masses" to me means people who aren't overly computer literate, but are interested in transporting data from home to work or wherever. As for backup, usually that is handled automatically at work. At home maybe all they would need to do is backup documents and email.. which will fit on a cd. And besides, relying on one 120gb HD as a backup makes no sense. If you want incremental backups... it won't last long. And you need removable media to store somewhere else. As for the "computer saavy" person. Christ.. It'd be much cheaper for me to simply carry around an HD on it's own, open the friggin case and plug it into an IDE channel.

The point...

[SexyKellyOsbourne]

You're all asking what the point of this is. Talking about how you could build a cheaper, better, faster one with a bigger pen^H^H^H hard drive in it, but you've missed the point.

This isn't for YOU, it's for your neighbor. Or your uncle, your Mom, or anyone else who DOESN'T have a closet full of overclocked Celeron 366 motherboards, and a working knowledge of Linux.

It's also for the people who don't have static IP addresses at home, but want to access their backed up files from anywhere:

Mirra's installation assumes that its location has an "always on" broadband connection, and uses it to reach out and touch the Ispiri corporate service. Most of the time, this is a simple "ping" every couple of seconds, although it also provides an opportunity for unattended software updates and fixes.

If an off-site user has properly authenticated to the Mirra service at the Ispiri host, and requests a file, the service makes the request when the Mirra next touches base. The advantage of this approach is that the connection is initiated by the Mirra server inside the user's router or firewall.

Sounds like a handy little box to me if it does all it says:
Automatic background backups
Automatic background file synchronization
Remote access that works behind a NAT-box
Expandable

I'm not gonna buy one, mostly because I don't need one, but when my Dad asks me about backing up his important info I just might tell him to get one....

Re:No Offsite Built-in, etc.

[An Onerous Coward]

Question: How often have you had hard drives fail? Now, how often have you had computers destroyed by fire or flood?

I thought so.

Quit whining. Not every story which features a commercial product constitutes an "advertisement." Do you complain when /. puts up graphics card benchmarks? Or when they cover another point release of Red Hat?

Home backup solutions are interesting. Unless you can show that /. or OSDN was paid to run this story, or that Extremetech was paid to review it, then just shut up and move on to a different story.