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Data Storage Hardware

Review of the Mirra Home Backup System 233

Posted by michael from the mirra-mirra-in-the-hall dept.
Darth Fredd writes "Having trouble backing up,or just too lazy to take the time? Behold Mirra, a networked RAID 1 volume, backs up everything automagically over the network. Extreme Tech has a review. Mirra uses the insanely popular (and fun) Mini ITX form factor motherboard. Mirra is targeted at the "normal" home and desktop user." We've mentioned the Mirra before.
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Review of the Mirra Home Backup System More

Review of the Mirra Home Backup System

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  • Covered before (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02, 2004 @10:41AM (#7860243)
    Yeah, this has been covered before, as it says. This 'article' reads like an advertisement. Are the editors taking money for this crap?

  • nice but (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mpost4 ( 115369 ) * on Friday January 02, 2004 @10:42AM (#7860247) Homepage Journal
    your average joe end user probably not pay $400 for a back up system. And that is even if they average joe end user has even thought about backups.

    • Re:nice but (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ... may be useful for those that handle quite a bit of corporate work on home machines. Get your company to buy you one, for their own peace of mind if nothing else.. ;-)

    • Re:nice but (Score:4, Interesting)

      by JWW ( 79176 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @11:06AM (#7860441)
      Its a fairly cheap mini-itx, though (if its based on the newer boards). I'd be tempted to buy one and turn it into a Myth frontend.

    • precisely... (Score:2, Informative)

      by rtilghman ( 736281 )
      My thoughts exactly. The concept is nice, but there is no way you're going to get joe consumer or joe "tech-savvy" consumer to plop down $400 for a back-up that:

      1) Takes a glacial amount of time to run (first run is apparently horrendous, but even the incremental back-ups are supposedly laughably slow)

      2) Can ONLY take software driven HD back-ups, and cannot serve as a file server/network drop (yeah, that's right, sucks doesn't it?)

      I saw a more critical review of the product that discussed testing, etc.

  • Good but $400? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WildBeast ( 189336 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @10:44AM (#7860271) Journal
    It's a little expensive for $400, not to mention that it's got only a 120GB HardDisk. How about those who have more data to backup?
    • It's a little expensive for $400, not to mention that it's got only a 120GB HardDisk.

      Well, technically if it's RAID-1 it'd have two 120GB hard disks. I wish I could find out more but the site seems slashdotted. Does anyone have a mirror of Mirra (no pun intended)?

    • Re:Good but $400? (Score:5, Informative)

      by gotpaint32 ( 728082 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @11:10AM (#7860470) Journal
      For $400 bucks Maxtor offers a 300gb portable backup hard drive, and $200 for a 120gb version. The idea of a network file server backup is nice but probably missing the mark with its targeted consumers. I would imagine most lay people would rather just plug something into the USB port of their computers rather than messing around with networking and whatnot.

      Maxtor One Touch [com.com]

      • Re:Good but $400? (Score:3, Informative)

        by tenman ( 247215 )
        it's the software that makes this box worth anything. it's web configurable, and a set and forget type device. also, you dont' have to setup a back up schedule, or render your machine useless while the back up happens. This thing monitors all the files on all the hard drives that it's told about, and backs up every file that gets changed as it changes, and saves up to 8 versions of those files to restore from. IMHO, it's really not a bad deal for casual user. I might get one, and set it up for my mom.
      • I have the Maxtor 120GB drive. It's fast (USB 2) and works well. It has a button on it that can automatically start a back-up if you're you're too lazy to launch an application in the normal way. It also comes with a surprisingly full featured version of Retrospect 6.0 [dantz.com], which is more than enough for typical back-up tasks.
    • As much as we would miss it, porn is not THAT important.

      Yeah, so I have like 300 gigs in the house, probably only 50 of that is important work or personal related stuff. The rest is anime, porn, video and games.

    • It's not size (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @02:13PM (#7861944) Homepage Journal
      No matter how big you make a disk, there will always be somebody who needs a bigger one. A typical SOHO network has maybe 30 to 60MB of non-redundant data. (Redundant data is stuff like application files you can easily re-install.) With incremental backups, the server will be obsolete long before it fills up.

      Anyway, if your data needs are past this level, you need to think about hiring an IS person, not buying a backup gadget.

      What makes this gadget a poor value is the level of safety is provides. All you're doing is copying your data from one hard disk to another. Two disks are better than one, but not that much better, especially if they're in the same building.

      Serious backup solutions use reliable offline media. Hard disks are pretty reliable these days, but still not as reliable as a tape or CD. Plus you can stick them in a fireproof box or store them offsite. Add some HSM [techtarget.com] software and you've got a storage system that's as big as you need it to be.

      No self-respecting campus network lacks this technology, but the SOHO user has been seriously neglected. Somebody needs to scale the tech down, and design the usual hand-holding front end so that you don't need a lot of training to manage the media. This has been an issue for years, even when SOHO computing consisted of one or two non-networked system. I guess catering to the low-end user is just not profitable enough.

    • Re:Good but $400? (Score:2, Informative)

      by emin ( 149044 )
      I agree. For people who want a free, open source solution which can make distributed off-site backups as large as you like with built-in encryption and error correction I recommend the Distributed Internet Backup System (DIBS) [sourceforge.net].

  • I definitely like the idea of this (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sarojin ( 446404 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @10:45AM (#7860274)
    just as a turnkey network file server, it would be great. Unfortunately for geeks it would still be cheaper to use an old PC running Linux

  • BackupPC (Score:5, Informative)

    by Aliencow ( 653119 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @10:45AM (#7860275) Homepage Journal
    For people who have a Linux server around the house,
    BackupPC [sf.net] is a pretty good solution that can fetch files to backup through Samba and Rsync ! Nice web based interface, too.

    • Re:BackupPC (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Espen ( 96293 )
      This looks like decent, but I keep seeing the missing link in projects like these is the assumption that you are already running, or have time to install, *nix on the box you want to use for this. If you have a spare box sitting in a corner, it would be much more tempting to use it as an 'appliance' with software like this, if it came bundled with its own mini-distribution: upgrade the harddrive and then just pop in the CD and boot it up like you do with Knoppix or floppy distributions.

      • Re:BackupPC (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Aliencow ( 653119 )
        Building a Knoppix clone with this running would be quite interesting indeed.. Especially if you could replace the web-based interface with a GUI that starts up as soon as you login, then you could select the partition you want to backup to, where you want to save your settings..
        • Why even log in? Make X go straight to a config utility with the option to jump to console (Alt-Ctrl-F1) if you're more of a power user.

          This kinda has me thinking now. A KNOPPIX clone installed on a hard drive that comes with webmin or some other simple config utility setup to run file services for a non-power user. FTP, HTTP, Samba, BackupPC, MP3, Tivo stuff perhaps...

          Anyone seen anything like this? Any thoughts on why it would be a good or bad idea?

        • ISTM the "average-joe-user-friendly" method would be a disty that lets Joe User "stick CD in spare PC's drawer, power up, let it boot and do its thing". Said disty would install as much OS as is needed to run as a dedicated backup server, the backup software with front end (for logging in, as you note that should be automagic), and nothing else. Is that kinda what you had in mind, so that any PC with enough disk space could be turned into a backup appliance?

          Would certainly simplify the home user backup pro

    • Re:BackupPC (Score:5, Informative)

      by dstutz ( 639854 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @11:47AM (#7860755) Homepage
      I run BackupPC on my linux server at home. I installed a separate harddrive and use it exclusively for this program. It's fairly easy to set up, works great, and the pooling+compression is wonderful because it saves so much space. Pooling means it doesn't back up more than 1 copy of the same file. It just links to that file in each backup (whether full or incremental).
      # 2 full backups of total size 16.48GB (prior to pooling and compression),
      # 6 incr backups of total size 1.29GB (prior to pooling and compression).
      As you can see it thinks it has backed up over 17.5GB of data but on the main status page it says:
      Pool is 6.98GB comprising 109320 files and 4369 directories (as of 1/2 01:00)
      Pretty sweet program.


    • BackupPC is a really nifty PERL utility. I remember using it in its infant form (and even hacked on it a little myself) years ago when I worked with Craig Barrat. Back then we used SuperTCP on Win3.11 systems to back up to an Exabyte single tape drive on an old Sparc-10 running (IIRC)SunOS 4.1.3.

      Talk about painful system administration...

      I can heartily recommend this utility to anyone; Craig does not write shit-code (neither does Paul.. Hey Tas, if you're reading this). The other two contributors I

  • No Offsite Built-in, etc. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by moehoward ( 668736 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @10:45AM (#7860280)
    So why not just do RAID on a main home computer and run automated backups to it? This thing is worthless for the one thing that people really need.... Offsite backup media.

    Your house burns down? You lost everything. You have a flood in your basement and your computer gets wet? You lost everything. Leaky celing onto your Mirra? Lost it all. Mirra HD crash? Lost it all.

    Thie advertisement on Slashdot is transparent. I got rid of all the other slashdot advertising by using the block images feature of Firebird. How do I get rid of this one?

    This product does not sufficiently solve the problem and should not be promoted on Slashdot.

    • Re:No Offsite Built-in, etc. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by elf-fire ( 715733 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @10:51AM (#7860327)
      All true, but I think you are comparing apple's and oranges. Aimed at the 'normal' user it will most likely backup people's letters, documents, bank-slips, holiday pictures and some home-video. Hardly anyone kept off-site backups of those when they were still on paper and magnetic-tape.

  • missing WebDAV (Score:3, Interesting)

    by stonebeat.org ( 562495 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @10:47AM (#7860296) Homepage
    Good idea. But it is missing WebDAV [webdav.org].
    WebDAV can make it very easy to put and retrieve files from the server, using a web browser (over port 80).

  • Pointless (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02, 2004 @10:48AM (#7860299)
    People who can't even be bothered to run Windows Update (for free!) aren't forking out $400 for a backup system for their data.

    And most people who do care enough about their data to back it up aren't going to use an expensive, single-purpose device to do it, they'll most likely be tech-savvy enough to roll their own server that does everything this thing does and more.

  • Little word of warning (Score:5, Informative)

    by LittleLebowskiUrbanA ( 619114 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @10:48AM (#7860302) Homepage Journal
    I have that exact case/mobo running OpenBSD 3.4 as my home firewall and it's much louder than you would think. The source of the noise is the power supply. Just as loud if not louder than the Enermax 330w on my Athlon system.

    The only difference I can find is that I have a Via 933mhz compared to the 1ghz on the Mirra. I had to strip the mounting bracket off of the 3Com NIC I added and secure it w/ double sided tape since it just wouldn't fit otherwise.

    Other than that, it's a pretty good investment for me ocnsidering it was $160 at Fry's sans memory and hard drive. Very reliable, doesn't take up much space. Just noisy. Maybe I could find another quieter power supply?
    • Maybe I could find another quieter power supply?
      Or, you could find another case. Perhapse one with an external power (DC) supply [idotpc.com]? FWIW, I have been trying to build an EPIA based system to use as a set-top box and even those with "extremely quiet" fans in the power supplies are still too noisy.
    • The noise is typically not the power supply itself, but the fan. In a standard PSU, the fan is easily replaced (you can find quiet ones from pcpowerandcooling.com among other vendors).

      Nifty trick: A standard case fan fits in most PSUs. Rather than trying to solder wires or find a plug that matches the PSU's fan connector, just unplug or snip that (be sure to wrap any naked ends with electrical tape), then run the new fan's wires out thru the same hole as all the other power leads, and plug it into any conv

  • Backups today (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @10:48AM (#7860305)
    From the article:
    Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to automatically back up your valuable data, share files, and roll back to older versions? Now there is. It's called "Mirra."

    I thought it was called a "CD burner". Soon to be called a "DVD burner". Simple, permanent, easy to share, easy to have multiple versions, etc. It's not automatic, but personally, I don't want "automatic" backups overwriting other backups I have on the same hard drive. Besides, CD's and DVDs are much longer lasting than hard drives.

  • How long until its hacked (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SiliconJesus ( 1407 ) * <siliconjesus@gm a i l . c om> on Friday January 02, 2004 @10:50AM (#7860312) Homepage Journal
    Like the TiVO, this thing is running linux, as such, its just a matter of time before people figgure out how to dd the image from the 120gb drive installed to add larger and faster drive capacities. Given that it is still a Linux PC driven application NAS, the possibilities are endless. The price is a touch high at $400, but it should drop once/if it gains marketshare.

    The other thing to contemplate would be to get the image off the harddrive, and be able to create bigger / badder boxes by simply adding the apropriate hardware drivers to Linux. Imagine the software portion being able to control a nice hardware RAID of say 200 GB drives. More fault tolerant and easier (for us Linux folks) to use.
    • I think that the bigger question is, Who will buy this thing at $400 a piece just to hack it?

      People who want to "get more from less" generally buy "less". I don't see a lot of people saying "ooo - cool, I can spend $400 on this, and then spend another $200 on a 300gb drive"... Not saying it won't be done, but the Tivo had a better price/value ratio (even without hacking)...

  • A backup 'solution?' (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JoeCommodore ( 567479 ) <larry@portcommodore.com> on Friday January 02, 2004 @10:51AM (#7860328) Homepage
    My home network consists of:

    - Windows 98/Linux Box (primarily Linux used)
    - B&W G3 primarily running OS9 (OSX on there too, boot to it maybe once a quarter or so)

    - wife's iMac OS9
    - a Commodore 64 with Contiki and RR Net

    If this is to be labeled a "solution" it should support all of them, right? ;->

    • The backups to software on the C-64 can be found in the back of the magazine, pages 168-174. Be sure to install the latest version of "Proofreader" on page 135!

      After restoring, save it to tape (or diskette, if you're lucky) and the program can be run anytime by typing LOAD "*",1 (for tape drives) or LOAD "*",8,1 (for diskette drives).

      To view your other backups, insert the diskette and type LOAD "$",8 . If you get no response, you may need to tap RUN/STOP/RESOTRE to resume.

      Sorry, must be the New
  • What's a backup?

  • What happens when mirra.com is gone? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by djmurdoch ( 306849 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @10:58AM (#7860386)
    You can't do restores locally, you *have to* do them through mirra.com. What happens when your Internet connection is down? What happens when they get tired of offering this free service, and start charging subscription fees? What happens when they go out of business?

    It's pretty bizarre to have all the negatives of off-site backup without offering any of the positives (i.e. off-site backup!).
    • Should have read the review. According to the review, off-site access through mirra.com isn't required. I just got that impression from reading the mirra.com site.

  • Anything more space efficient? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by michaelmalak ( 91262 ) <michael@michaelmalak.com> on Friday January 02, 2004 @11:00AM (#7860401) Homepage
    Mirra seems to have products for "home", "small office", but how about for "apartment", or just a home trying to be space-efficient?

    For the first time in over twenty years, I'm eliminating my "computer room" -- switching instead to the concept of a server closet plus roaming notebooks with WiFi. I don't think I'm the only one.

    My server closet currently has a cable modem, a WiFi router with built-in print server & parallel port, and a laser printer. The cable modem and router are the typical small vertically standing self-contained units. I'd like to find storage and backup servers in the same form factor, with a web-accessible admin page -- like the router has -- to avoid the need for bulky keyboards and monitors. At first glace at their website, it doesn't look like Mirra has such a beast -- just units built around a full-size desktop tower.

  • I preferred (Score:4, Funny)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @11:07AM (#7860450) Homepage

    Dave Mirra BMX to this as no matter how hard I tried it just wasn't as much fun raiding a disc as pulling a double backflip over a moving train.

  • Not sure why you're calling it a RAID 1 unit (Score:5, Informative)

    by CatOne ( 655161 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @11:17AM (#7860524)
    It's not actually RAID 1, and in fact there's no RAID in the unit at all.

    Is this an attempt because it synchs your data? I've seen RAID 1. I know RAID 1. And lemme tell ya, that ain't RAID 1.
    • I was looking and looking for what kind of Raid they offered, but couldn't find anything! I just thought I was not able to find the details about Raid.

      What I think would be cool is a home unit like this that included two hard drives and mirrored them, so that I could just pop one unit out (perhaps an HD in a cart that they would sell) for a quick offsite backup with not much chance of main unit failure (alternately replacing an HD a year ought to cover things).

      Instead the system is mostly about easy shar

  • And how does this help you recover old data? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by g0hare ( 565322 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @11:19AM (#7860549)
    How does it help you get back that deleted file from last year? How does it help you take your data to a secure offsite location in case of disaster? Why isn't it cheaper than just buying a second hard drive and mirroring it? Why would anyone use this except people who still run win98? Even those losers could buy a cheap removable hard drive cage and an IDE raid controller, then even take the drive off site.

    This is a technology in search of a use.

    • Mirroring a drive is pointless if you get a virus.

      Home users don't usually pay for iron mountain to come by and pick up tapes

      And that IS affordable for what it does. You can spend 10 grand on a new flat screen tv but you can't spend 399 on backup system?

      Most people spend that much on cell phones and pda's that never get that much use to begin with.

      geez, thinking about it i paid that much for my RIO mp3 player when it came out.
    • Average Joe answers:

      How does it help you take your data to a secure offsite location in case of disaster?

      That's what the Office of Homeland Security is for, isn't it?

      Why isn't it cheaper than just buying a second hard drive and mirroring it?

      I already have enough RAM thank you.

      Why would anyone use this except people who still run win98?

      Come on! I upgraded to Windows ME six months ago!

      Even those losers could buy a cheap removable hard drive cage and an IDE raid controller, then even take th

  • Mirra (Score:2, Insightful)

    by badmammajamma ( 171260 )
    Mirra is a great idea really. I would like a networked backup solution that I can even access from anywhere on the web. In fact, this is exactly what I'm looking for in a backup product right now. However, I will NEVER buy this product with it's current pricing model. Not because it's $500, but because they charge an extra $100 for an upgrade of 80 to 125GB of storage. A quick check on price watch shows you can get a 160GB HD for $104. It's called RAPING the customer. Mirra can go to hell for that.
  • I checked around the mirra.com site, and could find no place to download the source code.

    If this box is running some linux variant, they need to at least offer the source code to all who have a mirra box in order to be in compliance with the GPL. (of course, it would be better for them to to offer the source via anonymous ftp, but the GPL doesn't require that...)

    Let's hope Mirra is not another Linsys.

    cleetus

    • Re:Where is the source code?? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, they aren't required to offer the source code unless they've made changes to anything. It sounds to me like they're just using a small distribution, a web server, and some backup software. It looks to me like all they are charging for is hardware and bundling.

      Short version: If I use the linux kernel in a commercial product, I don't need to offer the source to it unless I've changed the kernel to do something special that it didn't do before. And if I write a program that operates on top of th

  • Useless. Only backs up Win2K or WinXP. (Score:5, Informative)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @11:57AM (#7860844) Homepage
    Phooey. It says right here [mirra.com] that

    "You can remotely access your photos and files from any Internet-connected PC, including Macs. Currently only computers that run Windows 2000 or Windows XP are supported for Mirra Backup and Restore within your home network."

    So, my wife's PC running Windows 98 and my PowerMac G4 running OS X 10.3.2 could read files that had been backed up from any other machines on our network... except... there aren't any.

  • Why wouldn't I just... (Score:3, Informative)

    by ewanrg ( 446949 ) <ewan.granthamNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday January 02, 2004 @12:08PM (#7860928) Homepage
    ... get one of these [amazon.com]
    For a lot less money and still have one-touch convienence, less electricity usage, and much quieter operation?
  • I've got a extra p225 with 196 meg of ram. How can I turn this into the same thing, but platform independent? I've got a BeOS machine, OS X, and Windows XP. I would love to mirror folders from each, but currently there is no easy way (that I know of).

    Where is the magic linux solution for this? Something that goes in, mirrors the files, keeps maybe 1 version back, and allows for automagical, hands-off, set and forget operation.

    I've tried various backup programs that claim to do similar things, but none

    • Install your favorite Linux distribution (I would recommend Debian) and Samba. Don't use Netatalk for OS X access, connect through Samba. Store your documents in your home directory from all three systems. Then use the directions here to use Rsync to backup your files [mikerubel.org].

      I don't know how any meta-information on files is handled with BeOS. Under OS X, connecting through Samba stores the meta-information in a hidden file in each directory.

  • Automagically (Score:3, Funny)

    by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Friday January 02, 2004 @12:47PM (#7861217) Homepage Journal
    Few days ago we had a story about the most irritating language in English. Didn't take it seriously because "automagically" wasn't on the list. My all time #1 irritant. It's just a cute way of saying "automatically". Cute language has its uses: it can amuse, satirize, and extend meaning. But this stupid word embodies cuteness for its own sake.
  • Since when does Slashdot post corporate press releases. . .
  • This is neat and all, but when you consider the impact re: machines hosting PVRs like Freevo and MythTV, all of a sudden it becomes Tremendously Cool (tm) .

    Does anyone out there have experience with both this and an off-the-shelf DVR which is openable, such as a ReplayTV? This is nearly an off-the-shelf expandable DVR solution, if making it talk to a Replay isn't difficult. That sort of thing a mom or a pop *would* pay $400 for, if they knew about it.
  • I've got a second 80GB drive in a ViPower hot-swap mobile data rack. Less than $100US for the lot. I just pop out my Windows drive and plug in the backup when I want to image my Linux drive.

    I don't keep anything important on the Windows drive so I don't need to back it up.

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