Comments on: Do Consumers Care Where Their Content Is Stored?

By: Michael Wolf

Michael Wolf — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:29:40 +0000

Set and forget is right. Too often, I find, there is an issue such as a firewall or something that makes the backup fail (I use Mozy, NAS and have been tinkering with Linksys’ Home Media Hub. – Mozy and the Media Hub sometimes won’t take and I have to tinker or manually initiate.

By: Stephen Scanlon

Stephen Scanlon — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 10:03:38 +0000

Combining a home solution and a cloud solution I believe will win out over the long run.

For example, a relatively inexpensive Windows Home Server solution gives me the satisfaction of control over my data locally while being able to share/host pictures, music, etc. for my ‘invited’ guests. The most important feature provided is nightly backup of all systems on my home network. From there, it’s off to the cloud (jungle disk at Amazon S3) to off site storage to prevent catastrophic events at home (server crash/hurricaines, etc.) from wiping out my lifetime of memories (data).

The secret of any backup solution is “set and forget”. One must be confident that their backup solution is working once it is set up and then should be transparent to the user from that point forward.

By: Kevin C. Tofel

Kevin C. Tofel — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:41:52 +0000

We’re finally starting to growth in the acceptance factor for online storage, which is great. I think that third-party services having access to data is still a sticking point for people. I could easily see a hybrid-model of local and online that you alluded to, but in the end, ^^^I think consumers will have simple and inexpensive choices that allow them to “host” their own data at home.^^^ Perhaps even apps could be running from home and they’re accessed on the road.

By: Mark Jaquith

Mark Jaquith — Sat, 09 May 2009 02:34:23 +0000

I use JungleDisk, which is an Amazon S3 interface. That backs up the contents of my home directory every night — about 125 GB (it only updates things that have changed).

I use MobileMe and Spanning Sync to back up and sync my contacts and calendars.

Of course, I also have multiple local backups (hourly Time Machine backups, nightly boot drive mirroring) — getting 125GB out of “the cloud” isn’t exactly fast. So ^^^for large amounts of data, the cloud can’t be the only solution — local backup recovery is orders of magnitude faster^^^.