An hour with the Datto 100 NAS
The Datto 100 and 500 are NAS devices, with 100GB and 500GB of storage respectively, that sit on your home network and, with a $10 monthly subscription, backup their contents to Datto's online storage service.
The instructions are straightforward: register at the official homepage, then with the box itself on its web-based administration panel. Once done, simply set up your network file shares, accessible via local IP address or by redirection to same from the official homepage—and the users who may access them.
When tested, setup failed at the point where the box asks for an admin user to be set up. This required a remote reset. Recovery involved accessing Datto's website and having it remotely add a "recover user," then logging into the box with its credentials, creating a new user and assigning it "web access" privileges.
Once up and running, it's easy to add SMB shares, create new users and assign them to specific shares. Users must have passwords, but shares can be made guest-accessible.
You can instruct the Datto to immediately backup to the online storage; pause ongoing backups; and configure schedules along with speed limits (e.g. upload at the default 96kbps during the day, but give it your full pipe late at night).
Resetting the datto box takes about 2 minutes — this is triggered for certain configuration changes like setting the Windows workgroup.
Other features include read-only FTP access over the internet, email alerts for device failure, low disk space, excessive backup times (triggered if it will take more than 30 days to complete a si ngle operation!), and if there are any network problems.
The box itself is small and neat, with no-nonsense industrial design. About 7 inches by 5, and about 2.5" deep, it has an odd fanless cooling grille looking into the PCB within.
More on the Datto after a few days of use.
the latest
latest episodes
My concern with these backup tools is the same as my concern for other network-server-based data storage services: Read the contract VERY carefully, to make sure they are not only committed to protecting your data's privacy now but that this obligation continues past their possible purchase by another company and/or bankruptcy. You may trust them now, but can you trust whoever will own their server farm next week?
Methinks what's needed is for the data shipped off to the network backup (and/or back down to this box) to be under a VERY strong encryption scheme, so that even if their server is compromised or resold the worst that can happen is that someone destroys your backups.
If this product actually does have that feature, great. Otherwise, I just don't trust it.
So that's what's on the desk.
Yikes. $399 + $10.00 a month for only 100 gig?
( http://www.dattobackup.com/store.php ) My MP3's and digital photos take up twice that space. My project files take up three times that much.
I recommend put Mozy on an existing computer. ( http://mozy.com/home ) Nice interface, unlimited storage $5.00 a month. Incremental backup, net access to the remote backup, and they store your data encrypted with your key (not theirs). Datto might store it encrypted, but I can't find any info other than they encrypt it in transit. They don't seem to have incremental backups, and the words "restored and delivered to your location in under 24 hours" is weirdly vague. Do they overnight a replacement unit to me? 24 hours can be a very long time to wait for critical data backups. With Mozy I can download the files I need without their intervention.
In next week's review, I'd be curious to see how it holds up. There is something to be said for a stand-alone device, but the Datto site is pretty slim on facts, and the competitor comparison chart is inaccurate about Mozy at least (There -is- remote access to your data, and you -can- fully recover your data in 24 hours if you can download it that fast. Otherwise they'll FedEx you DVD's.) I don't know enough about the other products to see if they are misrepresented as well.
(Not Mozy employee or reseller, just satisfied customer and semi-pro skeptic.)
FWIW, I have a case similar to that on my desk. Made by Galaxy. It looks okay, but it's "fanless" as well since the blue LED fan died a few months after I got it.
Please mention Mac compatibility if possible.
Works with Macs -- it's what I'm using it on. The shares are SMB (apple-k then SMB:\\192.168.1.whatever) and the web interface works fine on FF.
Why would you put your personal data on someone else's computer? Why not just build your own Raid-5 array?
#7: Offsite backup is a Good Thing. Local RAID is a fine way to protect yourself against ordinary hardware failure but may not save your data from a lightning strike and definitely won't save it from a house fire. Depending on how much of your filesystem is easily and cheaply replacable, and how much time you're willing to put into rebuilding it completely from scratch, it may indeed be worth storing a backup elsewhere.
If so, the question is how you get it there. You could pull offline backups periodically and put them in a safe deposit box or other location, but then anything you've been working on since that last backup is at risk. Or you can run near-continuous backups via the network, but that requires a server somewhere to catch and save this data for you. There are professional tools and for this purpose (IBM's Tivoli family includes one such set), but if you're looking for something to protect just a few machines and you don't have another site to house the remote server, paying someone to provide that service for you may be a perfectly reasonable thing.
If you're just a gamer, or otherwise place no value on being able to recover the most recent contents of your system, I agree this may be massive overkill. But remember, a lot of us have much more than "personal data" on our PCs -- we may have stuff that's actually making money for us, or which would cost us money if we lose it. For them, this may be cheap insurance.
My concern is just that if this *is* something you need, the implementation needs to be trusthworthy and responsive and affordable and easy to use. As always, it may be hard to get all of those at once. ("Quality, Service, Price -- pick any two.")
I prefer this Dato 100