My personal cloud.
My little Mrs. (hot geek) bought me a PogoPlug for my birthday. No, get your mind out of the gutter; it’s a home network attached storage device. Even more than that, it is essentially a small Linux server which allows you to access your files from any computer or even iPhone via the internet! Here’s how it works: Connect the device to your home router, connect a usb hard drive to the plug, register it on the PogoPlug site and your set. You can upload files to it via any web browser along with viewing, renaming, deleting etc. Or you can download a small installer which maps your Pogoplug as a network drive on your pc or Mac. I had intended to connect a couple old 120Gb ide drives to it but quickly discovered that the cable I planned on using was USB 1.0 instead of 2.0 so I need to get new cables to use those. In the meantime I was anxious to try this bad boy out. So, I connected an old 30GB iPod video to it. It instantly connects and is available via my browser or network drive. The really big selling point for me on this is that a usb hub can be attached so that multiple drives can be mounted. The company also offers a free iPhone app which allows you to upload pictures to it as well as stream music, view pictures etc. right on your phone from anywhere in the world. That was one of the first features I tried and must say it works great. The device is managed using the My Pogoplug site which really just acts as the mediation server for connecting to the device. Your data is as secure as it would be on your home computer.
Here’s a shot of the mypogoplug management site:
If you’ve been looking for a good backup that is easy to use and is extremely accessible I can’t recommend the PogoPlug enough.