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Desktop Footprint is Shrinking

Affordable SOHO Backups

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[posted by rdp]

The desktop footprint is shrinking everywhere. Shuttle (www.shuttle.com) form factor PCs are being deployed in the Enterprise in point product situations like Firewalls, Print servers and local NAS for disk-to-disk backup. You can currently get up to a terabyte in one of these. This technology was originally aimed at the SOHO to SMB Desktop areas but the higher cost of the smaller form factors stopped them cold. A smaller footprint is not worth paying $200-$300 dollars more for. They have found favor with gamers as the compute power has improved. You can build a "screaming" luggable shuttle. The gamers like them for their "luggability". You can buy a carrying case for your "luggable" and a 17" LCD display and be off to the gaming conventions. Wireless is making real inroads in the SOHO.

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[posted by rdp]

A few thoughts on affordable home backups:

• First, hard drive cost/GB has continued to fall, along with capacity of the drives. Pricewatch [pricewatch.com] shows $1.10/GB for 120 GB drives. This has become a decent option for daily backups, IMO.
• Second, DVD-R drives are also dropping in price. Pricewatch shows the Pioneer DVR-104 for under $250, which can store 4.7 GB per disc. It's not fast, but good enough for home use.

[rdp note]... this information is from mid-year 2004 so the prices are higher than the present. $1/GB, or less, is a pretty steady street price now. You can buy a DL (dual layer) DVD+-RW for $50-$70 almost anywhere. The trend is definitely clear. First backup to disk and then archive to DVD...

Though Robert X. Cringely [pbs.org] suggests that "I think the data we really value is a small subset of the data stored in our PCs. I was amazed to learn, for example, that user data typically comprises less than 10 percent of the data on most PC hard drives." A CD-R might handle the truly important data. (You'll need to re-rip the CDs anyways when the Next Best Thing comes along in music compression anyways... <grin>)

[rdp note]... more and more people are trying DVD backup solutions. Most SOHO Backup software will write to DVD's without problem. There are some problems with writing incrementally to DVD's. The DVD limited capacity, even at 9.2 GB DL, is still a problem for unattended backups. People are now beginning to look interested when I mention RAIDVD. Too bad it doesn't exist except as a concept...

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