Corsair launches Voyager Port

by Scott Bicheno on 31 March 2009, 08:47

Tags: Corsair

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What you get

What you get for your money is a small dock (pictured here next to a laptop and a business card) and NovaBACKUP 10 software. The dock has a button on it that will initiate the backup of your chosen files onto any flash drive once the software's been installed.

 

 

As well as being slower and more expensive per GB that HDDs, flash drives are also far more limited in their maximum capacity. Ogden reckons that shouldn't be a concern for the majority of users. "We asked a cross section of consumers [1,757 respondents] how much data they back-up. 80 percent of them said less than 64GB and 70 percent said 32GB."

So it's clear that Corsair isn't expecting to own the external HDD market with this, but as a relatively cheap functionality enhancer for people who already have high capacity flash drives its seems like a promising option. Corsair hasn't released pricing yet, but it's expecting the Port to hit the channel by the beginning of next week. Do you think Corsair has a point? Let us know in the HEXUS.community.

 


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HEXUS Forums :: 6 Comments

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Posted by deleted - Tue 31 Mar 2009 09:06
Nice gadget, but it's price point is going to be the making of the deal. Otherwise people will just continue to plug in their usb drive, and drag/drop files as they normally do.

Failing that, there's Microsoft's free SyncToy, and plenty of other free backup utilities.

Plus as portable SSD's come down in price, the high capacity pen drive's day's may well be numbered.
Posted by deleted - Tue 31 Mar 2009 09:32
As OiD said.

Gareth Ogden
Gareth Ogden]It's not going to beat a portable hard drive on cost per gigabyte, but it's much more portable or durable
I wouldn't say more durable. Not when my own Voyager had the USB connector simply fall off randomly. You might be able to roll entire planets over them, but in everyday use they're… well this is the only USB stick I've had which has failed. There's a degree of irony in there somewhere.

I'll stick to USB-powered hard drives thanks.
Posted by deleted - Tue 31 Mar 2009 11:23
I can see this appealling to small businesses that don't have centralised network storage: the easier you can make it for users to back up their data the more likely they are to do it! Assuming it encrypts the backed-up data as well, I could see me recommending these purely on convenience terms…
Posted by deleted - Tue 31 Mar 2009 12:53
Deleted
I can see this appealling to small businesses that don't have centralised network storage: the easier you can make it for users to back up their data the more likely they are to do it! Assuming it encrypts the backed-up data as well, I could see me recommending these purely on convenience terms…

For home users perhaps, but a business expecting employees to be responsible for backing up their data? NO! People have enough to do in a day without having to think about that. Even for a small business it'd likely be cheaper to install a dedicated backup server (NAS/etc, even WHS* would do - it doesn't need be expensive) which automates the entire process rather than a solution per PC. Keep it automated and transparent - let your employees do their job.

*That's what I use at home (also my place of work) and it's been completely reliable since I bought it over a year ago. I configure each computer installation once, that includes setting up network access and setting up the automated, and transparent, backup process.

My WHS box hybernates 15 minutes after the last computer hybernates, and wakes up as soon as the first computer wakes up. If a computer isn't awake when it's its turn to be backed up, the box will wake it up, back it up and put it back to sleep. If a computer is awake, it'll get backed up without me even noticing - I just continue using the computer as normal. That all works over ethernet and WiFi.

All important data gets replicated to multiple drives within the box, and the box gets backed up to a portable drive. Although I haven't configured it yet, I have the option to configure automated backups to off-site storage (Amazon's S3 for example).

Backups needn't be expensive or difficult. But I do feel that relying on a Sneakernet type solution, especially for businesses, should be a thing of the past. Keep it simple, automated and transparent :)
Posted by deleted - Tue 31 Mar 2009 17:52
Scott, is it really a good idea to have your businesscard in a shot with the HEXUS labs address and Paul's phone number still visable? :telephone:

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