Product Endorsement: Mirra Personal Server

Since April I've been running a Mirra personal server.  It's wirelessly connected to my network and just invisibly backs up everything on my two laptop computers.  I set it up and then ignored it.  Should have tested it to see if it was working, or whether I installed it right, but who can be bothered with these things? 

A couple of months ago my other laptop started behaving erratically.  I never use it for anything except a music server, so I sort of ignored it.  And then it locked me out, so it's on and running but I can't get into it.  And I continued to ignore it until last night, when I realized a document I needed is on that computer, not this one.  Just as I began to wail and gnash my teeth I thought, "I wonder if this Mirra thing can help." 

And sure enough, without much fuss, without opening the manual or doing much more than opening a couple of menus and making a correct guess about what I wanted to do, I was able to climb in through Mirra and copy all the files from that computer onto this one.   And the Mirra sits quietly behind me, humming along, backing up everything I do.  It's great.  If you have data that you care about, but you're lazy or generally untechnological, you might want to consider getting one of these.

Comments

[Dan]

I've looked at the Mirra Personal Server, and while it looks like a pretty good piece of hardware, my major complaint with it, and a major deficiency with it, is that it only supports Windows-based PCs.

I primarily use a Mac for my day-to-day computing, as I don't feel I should have to spend a day out of every week doing maintenance on a computer just to make sure it will be there for me, as I used to do on my Wintel laptop.

[Litoralis]

Yeah, my problem is the same as Dan's. I have an iMac, an iBook and an IBM Thinkpad that are all on my wireless network at home so I don't think Mirra would work for me.
Maybe someone out there has some good suggestions for those of us with Macs and PCs.

[Michael J.]

Something like the Infrant ReadyNAS 600 wil act as a monster hard drive for backups and to serve music. It connects to the Ethernet directly, and shows up as a shared hard drive. You would still have to remember to copy the backup stuff from the PC/Mac to the NAS though. It can be automated, but it's too situation-specific to generalize. Supports Mac just fine though.

http://www.infrant.com/

Sounds pretty nice! Does this use a lot of electricity? How loud is it? Could you, say, put it in a closet, since it connects wirelessly and really forget about it? This sounds like a great find!

[Michael J.]

If you're commenting on the Infrant, here's a good overview / review of how it fits into home music system schemes:

http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/whole-house-music

[Richard]

Yeah, but would you have paid $400 for it (that's the *starting* price).

[pjm]

Some months ago, I made curious noises about a Chili Box: http://www.chilisystems.com/index.jsp?nPage=1

I don't think it's quite as thoroughly integrated or low-maintenance as the Mirra Sherry describes, but it's a decent cross-platform option at a similar price.

[soma]

Your information strongly has helped me, thank you for it!

[Home work]

I am a car salesman too, and i absolutely degree with blake opinion!Many bucks just spent fo free! It is very bad! And i hope, that in the future this problem will not be!