March 24, 2008 | Comments: (0)
I just got my new Eye-Fi SD card and I'm just excited to get going with it. I'll have to admit that it never even crossed my mind to have a card that wirelessly uploads your pics from your camera to your computer, but I'm glad there are people like the folks at Eye-Fi thinking about things like this.
One of the biggest headaches I have is trying to upload all my pics every week. It usually takes me 2 hops; one from the camera to the laptop and another from the laptop to the server. And that's after having to chase down my card reader and messing with the tiny eject mechanism on my camera. With Eye-Fi I should be able to go directly from my camera to my server.
I'll be putting it through its paces here in a little while and I'll let you know what I find. But I'm already encouraged. This is the kind of innovation we need in the rest of the industry.
Posted by Sean McCown on March 24, 2008 10:36 AM
June 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Data Robotics Drobo
Our addiction to movie clips, photos, songs and whatever else grabs our fantasy is the primary reason for a data deluge that doesn't affect only corporations but is creeping also in our homes and home offices.
In my own backyard, the amount of data that two people and three pets have created from their home computers is simply ridiculous considering that our pets rarely touch the keyboard.
Keeping that data organized and protected is becoming one of the most taxing house chores because even the most capacious USB drive will fill up sooner or later, adding yet another island of data to the household archipelago.
For geeks like me that scenario is just an opportunity to stuff a PC with drives, add a RAID card and tie up all those loose ends into one bunch. However, a normal, non-geek person will resort to buying yet another, soon to become full drive, which in the long term adds to, rather than solving the problem.
Enter Drobo, a 4 bay box from Data Robotics that can host 3.5" SATA drives of any size and promises easy capacity updates with seamless, in place data migration.
Data Robotics rounds the deal with built-in automatic data protection that can survive the failure of one drive without data loss.
Drobo connects to a single Apple or Windows machine via a USB cable. It doesn't require an agent on the client machine, but before using Drobo for the first time you need to install a management application, the Dashboard, and run a one time formatting operation.
After doing that first step, I had a Drobo drive of 2 TB in my Windows XP machine, although the actual capacity of my drives was much less.
In enterprise storage lingo that capability is called thin provisioning, a feature that has many marketing folks thumping their chest in pride. For home and SOHO users that capability simply means that adding more drives will automatically expand their playground up to that 2 TB capacity.
Obviously, Drobo is not a dumb box and runs its own OS that can be automatically updated downloading new versions via Dashboard. In fact, during my evaluation I saw quick downloads of new versions of both the Dashboard and the OS.
You can start with just two drives and add more later to increase capacity. The Dashboard will let you know when Drobo is getting short on space and will also suggest which drive should be replaced with a larger one.
You don't need to worry about moving data, because Drobo will do that automatically in the background. Another nice touch: Clicking the "Show me how" button will start a movie clip that explains how to do that action in great detail, a boon for the less experienced users.
Drobo's automatic space management takes away some of the pain from the user but it's important to understand that the actual space available will be somewhat less than the raw capacity of the drives you mount, because the Drobo OS will reserve part of that space to ensure data integrity.
Figuring out how much space will be ultimately available is not so intuitive. For example, when I loaded Drobo with three 74 GB drives plus a 160 GB unit the Dashboard showed only 202 GB available.
Where did the rest of my capacity, about 180 gigs, go? Clicking on a link on the Dashboard I got my answer, well sort of.
However, you don't need to figure out by hand how much space a certain combination of drives will amount to because Data Robotics has an online calculator that will do the math.
Bear in mind that a more balanced combination of drives will translate in less space set aside unused. Regardless, that difference between nominal and actual capacity is the price to pay to keep data safe, something that Drobo does very well.
For example, to simulate a failure I replaced one of the Drobo drives with a bad one, a faulty unit that I can't even format.
Drobo went immediately into red alert mode and began rebuilding the unreachable data from the failed drive, making also very clear that another broken drive would spell disaster.
Replacing the faulty drive brought everything back to normal after a while, but I never lost access to my files, even when Drobo was busy redistributing data across drives.
Data Robotics Drobo
Availability: Shipping
Pricing: MSRP $500 plus drives
Verdict:
I have mostly praise for Drobo at the end of my evaluation. The unit has robust management features and failsafe data protection logic that I hope Data Robotics will extend in the future also to larger units.
Performance is acceptable but limited by the USB connection and perhaps more by Drobo's built in priority for keeping data safe. For example, a 300 GB Windows backup targeting the Drobo volume took almost 11 hours. 
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However, I never noticed any delay accessing files on the Drobo volume, and my movie clips ran without hiccups.
Drobo is noisy. It may depend on what drives I was using and on the weather, but in the hot Texan climate the Drobo cooling fan was annoyingly loud. Luckily it turns off occasionally, but I had to move the unit as far as possible away from me.
At $500 plus the cost of the drives, Drobo is not exactly cheap, but makes for an easy to use, dependable solution that you can let your mom use with confidence, even if she is not a geek.
Posted by Mario Apicella on June 21, 2007 03:37 AM
May 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Hands on: Seagate FreeAgent Go
Seagate FreeAgent Go
Anyone who travels knows all too well how inconvenient is to carry along a heavy laptop. If you are thinking of an hand-held device such as the Blackberry consider that many people can't survive just on an e-mail diet when on the road.
I belong to that group, which is why I was eager to try out FreeAgent Go, a recent offering from Seagate that bundles a sleek portable USB drive and, to quote the vendors' hype:
..software that let's you take your desktop environment and all your files to go..
The FreeAgent Go I tested has a nominal capacity of 160GB but the drive comes also in 80GB and 120GB capacity. In addition Seagate offers a Small version with only 12 GB and just a notch over 2 inches long.
The FreeAgent Go is slightly bigger than the Small version, about 5" x 4", or the size of a man's wallet. The drive has a large orange front window that pulses during data transfers or when there is an error but you can turn that feature completely off if needed.
The opposite side of the drive hosts the USB 2.0 port and is covered by a clear Plexiglas screen through which, with the proper light, you can see the 2.5", 5,400 RPM drive inside.
Setting up the Ceedo software on my Windows XP laptop was a no brainer. Ceedo Personal is an application that makes possible installing your most needed programs on the FreeAgent Go drive.
Those programs run directly from the drive, so when on the road you only need to borrow a PC or laptop with 2 USB ports, plug in your FreeAgent Go and you'll have your files and applications with you.
When connecting the drive back to your home machine Ceedo will automatically sync your files with the portable version.
For my test I installed Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox plus a graphic editor on the FreeAgent Go. After choosing the directories to take with me I let FreeAgent complete the copy.
Then I moved my drive to another machine to simulate being on the road on a borrowed computer.
After connecting my drive to the foreign PC, I saw the main menu of FreeAgent appear on my screen. I was able to launch my applications from the drive without problems, and without installing anything on that machine. My files were there and easy to access as expected
Moreover I had all my bookmarks and IE favorites, but I found out with a bit of disappointment that all browser's add-ons need to be reinstalled manually.
To bring with you more applications, simply repeat the same process but it's important to understand that Ceedo can install only a limited number of programs.
If you use other programs not included in that list, you can download Argo, an add-on to Ceedo that makes possible installing programs from a regular setup file. Argo is not free but you can purchase it online for $20.
After installing Argo the list of supported programs grew quite a bit longer. However, Microsoft Word, probably the application that I use the most was not in that list.
Seagate FreeAgent Go
Availability: Shipping
Pricing: around $200 for the 160GB model
Verdict:
After playing with FreeAgent Go for a few days I still like the drive and its 5 years warranty, but have serious doubts about being able to take my desktop environment with me, unless I can work around not having the Office suite and other unsupported apps I use.
Another concern I have is that whatever files I change or create anew while traveling would be my only copy.
If that thought doesn't make you uncomfortable and the applications that Ceedo and perhaps Argo support fit you well, you can probably leave your laptop behind. For now I'll pass.
Posted by Mario Apicella on May 18, 2007 12:30 PM