Pensamos Digital, Inc.

[kane]

hello

i hope you can help me with my inquire.after reading threw your web site,i didnt find any information in regards to weather your free software download is avalible to normal laptop users an people who use a basic broadband service for normal home use.

please can you let me no if your product is avalible for me to use?
if its avalible to me,whats the most amount of data i can backup with your product?

hope to hear from someone soon.
_________________
antony a fellow user in need of assistance

[admin]

Hello,

Magic Mirror Backup will work with a laptop, though you will still need a second computer at home for your laptop to store backups on and vice versa. The computers need to be on a home network and at least one should have a static IP address. If you only have a single computer or if you have no home network, you can try to share backups with a friend over a broadband connection, although this is not supported or recommended because firewall configuration would complicate the setup procedure and because the security that is in place for the peer to peer portion of the backups was meant for a local network only and isn't yet as strong as it should be for use across the internet.

There is an experimental off-site backup feature which will let you securely backup to a machine across the internet in addition to (or instead of) other machines in your home or office. The original intent was that Pensamos Digital would run the machines that are used for these remote backups and people would sign up for a subscription service to use this. However, the main requirement for the remote machine is that it is running a web server that supports PHP, so you could possibly set up the service for yourself so that backups are transferred using your broadband connection to your hosting service if you have an account on a web server that supports PHP (there are plenty of very cheap web hosting services to choose from which support PHP). We will consider releasing the necessary software for running your own offsite backup if enough people request it in the feature request forum.

The maximum recommended data size will vary based on how fast your machine is, how much free space you have, and how much time you want your computer to dedicate to making backups each day. I would recommend starting out with your important files, preferably around 100M or less, and if the backups aren't too intrusive or too space consuming, repeatedly double the amount that you backup and test again until you are either backing up everything you want or the backup process consumes more resources than you would like.

If you would like to see additional features or options in Magic Mirror Backup, please tell us what you would like in our feature request forum at http://www.pensamos.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=2 We are very interested in learning what new features people would find most compelling and the more people who request a particular feature, the more likely it will be added later on.

Thanks,
- Tim Macinta
Pensamos Digital

[dalton]

Hi there,
Great software. Off-site really would be a better solution for me, though. I don't have a second computer at home that I could run the software on, but I do have a PC at work with lots of hard drive space, and I could easily run a PHP server on it. I wold love to see what's going on with the experimental feature. Does it do auto synchronization, by any chance?

Cheers,
Dalton

[admin]

Hello,

Yes, the backups are automatic, if that's what you meant by synchronization. It would archive the files you select from home and store them in an encrypted file on the server on an automated schedule. It wouldn't let you share files, though, if that's what you meant - things would be encrypted on the PHP server.

Regarding your PC at work, would you be able to set it up so that normal web requests could get through to it? There are really two parts to that question. First, would it allow incoming requests from the internet on some port (80 or otherwise) or would your firewall block that? Second, would there be a consistent way to contact it - either a host name or a fixed IP address?

If it sounds like you could use this, I'll see what I can put together for you.

Thanks,
- Tim Macinta
Pensamos Digital

[dalton]

This sounds perfect. The encrypted file would be just fine - as long as I could use some sort of password or key to access the files in case of a disaster at home.

I have full access to the firewall at work (I am the IT Director) and can provide myself with a static address. I am already running SSH and connecting from home, so adding another port for this service would be a snap.

Looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks very much.

Dalton

[admin]

Hello Dalton,

I just wanted to know that I'm putting something together for you. It may take a few days to get everything together - sorry about the delay. I'll post again in the forums once something is ready.

Thanks,
- Tim Macinta
Pensamos Digital

[admin]

Hello Dalton,

I have completed the experimental off-site backup distribution for your use. In order to keep this forum thread from straying too far from the original topic, I have created a new topic to give the details of the distribution and to allow further discussion:

http://www.pensamos.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=29#29

Please post any followup questions/comments there or in a new thread.

Thanks,
- Tim Macinta
Pensamos Digital