Mirra Personal Server: Hit or Miss?
By Patrick Norton - Posted Apr 12, 2004
My No. 1 piece of advice is to back up often. You ignore me regularly. It doesn't matter if you have 40 odd gigabytes of MP3 audio files, a quarterly sales report, three years of tax information, a term paper, homework, a movie script, the great American novel, or a collection of recipes. You folks rarely think about backing up until you stare at a dead hard drive. A shame, since all it takes is a few seconds to back up a Word doc to a thumbdrive. (OK, 30 or 40 minutes and an external hard drive for you mega-gigabyte hoarding MP3 and video fanatics.)
Mirra knows how you work and knows you should be able to back up your important files in a painless "set it and forget it" install that stores your files on some fairly bulletproof storage without having to invest too much time figuring anything out. To that end, it created the Mirra Personal Server, a product that sounded so promising we decided to take a look at it on tonight's episode of "The Screen Savers."
Managing Mirra
Before thinking of investing in a Mirra Personal Server, make sure you have an Ethernet connection, broadband Internet, and Windows 2000 or WinXP (no Mac, Linux, or Win98 support yet.). The small, relatively stylish PC packs an 80GB, 120GB, or 250GB hard drive. It also includes a software client to administer the server and automate backups.
Then there's Mirra Web Services, the system that uses Microsoft's .NET services to connect you to your Personal Server. This is where things get a little strange. You don't have direct access to the files on the MPS, unlike a traditional file server or Networked Attached Storage (NAS) where you basically have a hard drive with an Ethernet connection so you can access it from your network. Instead you access them remotely through the Mirra.com login, or locally through the Mirra client.
Share your stuff
Using the MPS as central storage for files, such as MP3s, for any system in your house won't happen. You could manually download those MP3s to any desktop in the house, assuming you have permission to access the files on the MPS, but you can't actually read or write the files stored on the MPS.
Oddly enough, the Mirra Personal Server makes it easy to distribute files to your friends. Just upload the files you want to share to the Mirra. Then select them and make them available online via a secure connection and private logon. Your friends get notified by email to create a Mirra account. Then they can download the files. The latest version of the Mirra software even includes a thumbnails system so your guests can pick and choose the files they want to download, which is a nice way to share those thousands of baby pictures.
Upload anywhere?
Unfortunately, remote access to the MPS doesn't include the ability to upload files to the MPS. No, you can't back up your notebook while travelling, at least not to the MPS (pack a thumb drive!). Nor can you upload files from a friend or from the office.
You can access the files you backed up while you were still at home over the same secure connection your guests use to share files from the MPS. At least I hope it's secure. It uses 128-bit SSL, so it should be as secure as online banking.
Cost matters
Is Mirra the "first personal server"? I suppose so. Is it perfect? Not quite. Offering remote uploads and local access to files on the server would go a long way towards closing the gap. A drop in price would help, too. The basic 80GB Mirra Personal Server costs more than twice as much as Maxtor's 80GB OneTouch external drive, one of the least painful backup tools we've ever used. Heck, you can pick up the 250GB Maxtor OneTouch for less than the cost of the 80GB MPS.
A promising future... maybe
The MPS offers an interesting way to automate data backups and an extremely convenient way to share files. It definitely has the feel of a product that will offer more and more features as long as the company releases software updates. Hopefully Mirra will stay alive to deliver those updates. Given its requirement of using Mirra website to access your backed-up MPS, it could become a doorstop overnight if Mirra goes out of business.
Mirra knows how you work and knows you should be able to back up your important files in a painless "set it and forget it" install that stores your files on some fairly bulletproof storage without having to invest too much time figuring anything out. To that end, it created the Mirra Personal Server, a product that sounded so promising we decided to take a look at it on tonight's episode of "The Screen Savers."
Managing Mirra
Before thinking of investing in a Mirra Personal Server, make sure you have an Ethernet connection, broadband Internet, and Windows 2000 or WinXP (no Mac, Linux, or Win98 support yet.). The small, relatively stylish PC packs an 80GB, 120GB, or 250GB hard drive. It also includes a software client to administer the server and automate backups.
Then there's Mirra Web Services, the system that uses Microsoft's .NET services to connect you to your Personal Server. This is where things get a little strange. You don't have direct access to the files on the MPS, unlike a traditional file server or Networked Attached Storage (NAS) where you basically have a hard drive with an Ethernet connection so you can access it from your network. Instead you access them remotely through the Mirra.com login, or locally through the Mirra client.
Share your stuff
Using the MPS as central storage for files, such as MP3s, for any system in your house won't happen. You could manually download those MP3s to any desktop in the house, assuming you have permission to access the files on the MPS, but you can't actually read or write the files stored on the MPS.
Oddly enough, the Mirra Personal Server makes it easy to distribute files to your friends. Just upload the files you want to share to the Mirra. Then select them and make them available online via a secure connection and private logon. Your friends get notified by email to create a Mirra account. Then they can download the files. The latest version of the Mirra software even includes a thumbnails system so your guests can pick and choose the files they want to download, which is a nice way to share those thousands of baby pictures.
Upload anywhere?
Unfortunately, remote access to the MPS doesn't include the ability to upload files to the MPS. No, you can't back up your notebook while travelling, at least not to the MPS (pack a thumb drive!). Nor can you upload files from a friend or from the office.
You can access the files you backed up while you were still at home over the same secure connection your guests use to share files from the MPS. At least I hope it's secure. It uses 128-bit SSL, so it should be as secure as online banking.
Cost matters
Is Mirra the "first personal server"? I suppose so. Is it perfect? Not quite. Offering remote uploads and local access to files on the server would go a long way towards closing the gap. A drop in price would help, too. The basic 80GB Mirra Personal Server costs more than twice as much as Maxtor's 80GB OneTouch external drive, one of the least painful backup tools we've ever used. Heck, you can pick up the 250GB Maxtor OneTouch for less than the cost of the 80GB MPS.
A promising future... maybe
The MPS offers an interesting way to automate data backups and an extremely convenient way to share files. It definitely has the feel of a product that will offer more and more features as long as the company releases software updates. Hopefully Mirra will stay alive to deliver those updates. Given its requirement of using Mirra website to access your backed-up MPS, it could become a doorstop overnight if Mirra goes out of business.
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