I recently saw a TV commercial from broadband provider Qwest that put a humorous twist on the very serious issue of data loss. In the commercial a mortified boy poses in a crib, in a high chair and on an undersized bicycle for new baby photos after his father dropped his laptop and lost all the originals. Qwest is promoting their Personal Digital Vault online backup service that provides online storage of important files for Qwest DSL customers. They offer 2GB of backup storage for free, and have paid offerings for households with larger storage needs.
One of the more important (probably the most important for the majority of people) features of Windows Home Server is the protection of your important files, such as family photos and videos, financial records, scanned documents, or whatever else holds value for you. Windows Home Server does a fantastic job of allowing you to store and access these files, and duplicates them across multiple hard drives to protect against the event of a single hard drive failure. This is great for in-home protection, but you’ll still lose everything should a catastrophic event occur such as a home fire, flood, tornado, or even theft.
There are a few different ways to guard against these unexpected events. Some users automate the backup of shared folders to external hard drives and store them off-site at work, a family member’s house, or in a safety deposit box. There are also numerous options for online backups, such as the built-in S3 Online Backup feature in the MediaSmart Server (currently available in the EX485/EX487 and coming soon to the EX470/EX475), JungleDisk, KeepVault, and Carbonite amongst others.
I personally have no use for the service from Qwest as I’m not a customer and use the S3 feature in the MediaSmart Server, but I think it’s great that the public is being exposed more to the real dangers of data loss and the use of humor is a good way to catch the viewer’s attention and get them thinking. I think this will also lead to more Home Server sales as more people recognize the value of backing up their data.
Are you using an online backup solution in conjunction with your Home Server, and if so which one are you using and how do you like it? What features are missing that would make for a better experience adding disaster protection to the Home Server?
Article by Alex Kuretz
I'm Alex Kuretz, and I'm the founder of MediaSmartServer.net. I was the Lead Test and Integration Engineer at HP for the MediaSmart Server until April 2008 when I moved on to other opportunities outside HP. I've kept active in the Windows Home Server community, creating several add-ins and helping users make the most of their Home Servers.