Comments on: How to Access Your Home Data While Traveling

By: Bryan

Bryan — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:41:49 +0000

I was circling some remote access software for quite a while, but I was always weary of leaving my system on all the time at home so it could be accessed when I needed it. I just couldn’t justify the cost and environmental impact. As soon as I learned that they can remotely wake a system up, I pulled the trigger – one of the best decisions I have made in quite some time when it comes to software purchases

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By: curiousjohn

curiousjohn — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:38:44 +0000

As far as I know, all of the tools mentioned use encryption to protect your data from prying keystrokes. It’s actually more secure than your typical coffee shop browsing session. When browsing on the go you can achieve the same encrypted data security by SSHing into your private home network.

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By: Chic

Chic — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 09:23:11 +0000

And why not to use any remote access software? So you could access your computer from anywhere.

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By: Stef

Stef — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:59:49 +0000

Also dropbox for me. I can highly recommend it.

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By: Carlo

Carlo — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:26:19 +0000

What are the security considerations/ramifications for this set up? With the ability to access data remotely on a home system, you’d be leaving a port/hole open to potential hackers right?

Is this any less secure than Joe Blow surfing the Internet in a normal fashion?

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By: Ross

Ross — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 04:12:54 +0000

NAS options that you suggest with the My Book World edition have high startup costs, as well as using energy 24/7 and not having a way to fix the system if there is a problem at home.

A much better solution would be a complete migration to the cloud. Amazon’s S3 service allows you to pay for only the storage you need, and will be a lot more reliable than your home network. Use jungledisk.com to access the service and keep their upload tool on a thumb drive. Rate are 15 cents a GB per month. If you don’t plan on storing much data, dropbox is another good option. And if your only going to store photos, consider google’s picasa.com or yahoo’s flickr.com, with have free and paid hosting, again much more reliable than a home setup.

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By: Steven Partington

Steven Partington — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:29:04 +0000

I was also sick of toting around a hard drive that could be lost, damaged, etc. and was looking for a better solution. I decided to try online data storage….I use SugarSync and have my files, photos, music all backed up and available online/downloadable from any system.

Even better, this service allows for automatic synchronization across multiple systems, so as long as I have an internet connection to sync changes, my files are always updated (and available locally) on whichever system (home/work/laptop) I’m using. If I’m not using my own system, I can ‘check out’ a file for editing/printing and check the changes back in from basically any system.

Also, app for iPhone auto-syncs photos to online storage; the system keeps 5 past revisions of documents; and deleted files can be recovered from online ‘trash’ until deleted.

Oh, and yes…it’s also good for those of us who are (sometimes) lazy about taking a the latest copy of semi-important data offsite in the event of, well….something bad enough that data loss won’t be your first concern (but then you remember all of your ‘backups’ were sitting next to your computer that is no longer recognizable, and…well….).

Tiered service fees range from a low end of ‘free’ for a couple of GBs of data or $4.99/mo for 30GB of data, up to $24.99 for 250 GBs. Gotta say I’m pretty happy with it (and no, I don’t work for the company).

Steven

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By: Hal

Hal — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:58:20 +0000

Give me terabytes! This is very cool.

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By: Guillermo Guerini

Guillermo Guerini — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 01:12:48 +0000

This is something that I’ve been thinking to do, but we have two main problems:
1) you depend on really good, fast and releible Internet connection, otherwise you’ll suffer to transfer 100mb in photos….
2) you need to setup these things before you leave your house. If you’re already far away…
And this is my problem now. Fortunatelly I still have space on my external HD but when I go back home I need to find a better solution.

For small files and documents, I use a service called GetDropBox.com. They offer 2gb for free and you can sync your files in different computer and on their website as well.

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By: travis

travis — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:28:34 +0000

for most travelers dropbox is all they’ll need as long as internet is available.

http://www.dropbox.com

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