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mirra personal server review from san jose mercury news
Personal server makes protecting home PC files convenient
December 4, 2003: San Jose Mercury News
Written
by Mike Langberg
Do you floss after every meal? Rotate your tires every six months?
Carefully categorize receipts and file your tax return in early February?
If so, you surely also make daily backup copies of important files on your
personal computer and don't need to read the rest of this column.
For the rest of us, there is the Mirra Personal Server -- a brilliant new
product that should quickly overcome a few first-generation shortcomings.
Mirra (www.mirra.com), from a Mountain View start-up of the same
name, is a $399 box with an internal hard drive that plugs into a home
network. After a short and relatively pain-free setup process, Mirra works
in the background making continually updated backup copies of every
important file on every PC in the network. You're now safe if the hard
drive on your PC crashes, or some other disaster makes your computer
unusable.
But wait. As they say on TV infomercials, there's more! You can also
access the files stored in Mirra from any computer plugged into the
Internet, using a free password-protected account managed through
Mirra's company website. And you can give others access to folders you
select -- allowing family to see only your digital photos, for example,
while co-workers can only see spreadsheets relating to your latest project.
There are less expensive ways to protect your data, but these are more
difficult to implement or require you to remember to take action. Mirra's
higher cost is justified by set-it-and-forget-it convenience.
To understand the value of Mirra, I'll start by explaining the problem.
Personal computers are increasingly the repositories of the most
important information in our lives. Treasured family pictures are stored as
digital picture files, stacks of music CDs are digitized as MP3 tracks,
financial records are preserved in Quicken, along with crucial work and school assignments in Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Today's hard drives are remarkably durable, but they aren't perfect. Fatal
drive crashes do happen, if rarely. What's more, virus attacks or general
computer failure can put your files out of reach for days or weeks as you
slog through expensive and complex recovery procedures.
Most of us have too many files to make backups on floppy disks or
recordable CDs. The only realistic alternative is an external hard drive.
You can plug an external drive into one PC, but then it's difficult to back
up files from other computers to that drive -- and that computer must be
running whenever other computers need to make backups.
The better alternative for homes with multiple PCs and a home network is
what techies grandly called Network Attached Storage, or NAS. This is
just a fancy name for an external hard drive that plugs into your home
router instead of an individual PC.
NAS devices until very recently were intended only for businesses and
cost $500 or more. Several consumer-oriented networking companies,
however, have recently introduced home NAS drives for under $400,
including D-Link (www.dlink.com), IOGEAR (www.iogear.com), Iomega
(www.iomega.com) and Ximeta (www.ximeta.com).
Most home NAS drives come with automatic backup software, although
that software isn't always as easy to install or customize as Mirra. Nor do
NAS drives provide remote access.
Mirra, which officially launched Tuesday, is only available for purchase
from the company website; several big electronics retailers will start
carrying it early next year. The cost is $399 for a unit with an 80-
gigabyte hard drive, or $499 for a 120-gigabyte drive.
I borrowed a Mirra from the company and needed only a few minutes for
physical installation. The 15-pound unit, which looks like a small upright
desktop computer, plugs into an AC outlet and a home router via an
Ethernet cable. Most WiFi wireless routers, by the way, include Ethernet
ports, so Mirra can become part of a wireless network.
The software phase is equally quick -- if you don't run into configuration
hassles. Mirra comes with software on CD that must be installed on each
computer. The software runs only on Windows XP or Windows 2000; the
company promises versions for Windows 98 and the Macintosh
somewhere down the line.
I had no trouble getting the software to run on a borrowed Dell desktop
with Windows XP, but I couldn't get the Mirra to start backing up files
from the Dell's hard drive. After a call to the tech support line, the glitch
got fixed -- something to do with the computer's security settings -- and
then everything worked flawlessly.
In Windows Explorer, I could now right-click on any folder and select a
new option: ``Back up with Mirra85.'' Selecting the option put a red dot
next to the folder name and immediately copied the folder's contents to
the Mirra. From this point forward, whenever a file in a red-dot folder was
changed, or a new file added, the Mirra got an instant update.
If you're protecting a large amount of data, the initial backup can take
some time; about half an hour per gigabyte. But subsequent backups are
almost instantaneous and invisible to the user.
There's a Mirra control panel where you can monitor how many files are
backed up, how much space remains on the Mirra and arrange the
details of remote sharing.
Remote sharing, too, was a breeze. You select a sign-on name and
password as part of the setup process, then use that name and password
on the company website to view a listing of your backed-up folders.
Clicking on a folder pops open a list of the folder's contents and you can
then select individual files to download.
To share with others, you enter the person's e-mail address and
designate which folders they can view. The person then receives an e-mail
with instructions.
I came away from Mirra with only two significant gripes.
First, the device has a somewhat noisy fan. This makes Mirra unwelcome
where quiet is important, such as a bedroom or TV room. Of course, you
can always hide Mirra in a closet -- once the device is configured, there's
no need to look at it again.
Second, Mirra doesn't function as a true networked hard drive providing
direct access to files. You can't see Mirra through Windows Explorer and
pull up a file; you have to go through the Mirra control panel. So Mirra
can't, for example, act as a music jukebox holding MP3 files that play on
any computer in the house. Instead, MP3 files would have to be copied
from the Mirra into each PC.
I'm inclined to forgive Mirra for the glitch I encountered in setup; creating
any product that automatically installs itself on Windows networks is
fiendishly difficult. And you never have to worry about configuration
hassles after you get over the hurdle of first-time setup.
Mirra's developers are also promising software upgrades that will add new
features, so it's possible Mirra will get direct access and work as a music
jukebox. Another idea under consideration is automatic synchronization
with online photo printing services, so new digital pictures would
automatically move from your PC to Mirra to the online service where you
could order prints.
Of course, Mirra isn't for everyone. You need a home router and highspeed
Internet access, either cable modem or DSL, for starters. But it
won't take more than one hard-disk crash, virus attack or lightning strike
to turn Mirra into a lifesaver.
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