I have written about PogoPlug before at http://goo.gl/nF6SN and at http://goo.gl/WzTCa). It is an excellent device for making backups of your important computer files or even ALL your files. The PogoPlug device is typically installed in the home, close to the computers being backed up. This provides an excellent LOCAL backup but still offers no protection for disasters in your home that might destroy both your computer(s) and your local backups, such as burst water pipes, fires, hurricanes, tornados, and such things. Now PogoPlug has added a new option: off-site backups.
I wrote once before (at http://goo.gl/Cztg7) about Amazon's new off-site backup service called Glacier. I believe Glacier is the lowest-priced storage of all the commercial services: as little as $0.01 per gigabyte per month. At these prices, storing data online in the cloud is significantly cheaper than purchasing your own disk drives. Using both an off-site storage system such as Glacier along with in-home backups such as PogoPlug provides near total protection for your data. The downside of Glacier is the complexity of configuring it for your own use. The Amazon Glacier menus are anything but user-friendly.
PogoPlug has now solved the complexity problem by integrating Amazon's Glacier backups within PogoPlug's easy-to-use menus. If you wish, you can back up your Windows, Macintosh, iPhone, iPad, and/or Android data locally to PogoPlug and SIMULTANEOUSLY back up the same data off-site to Amazon Glacier. Having every file backed up locally as well as in the cloud provides great protection. Of course, as with almost all cloud-based applications, security is industrial grade. Nobody can access your files unless you give them the encryption key. Plans start as low as $29/year and includes 100 gigabytes of off-site backup space. Larger amounts of file space are available at higher prices. Local backup file space is unlimited; if you fill up the available hard drive space you simply add more hard drives.
Further information may be found at http://pogoplug.com/ and in an article by Alan Shimel in Network World at http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/81350.
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