Product Review: FireKing MediaVault
I suppose I’ve always gotten carried away with data backups. At any point in time, usable, recent copies of our company’s critical data are stored in at least five physical locations, in at least three different backup formats, and I regularly run tests to ensure the backups are usable and recoverable. I use two different tape formats (DAT, and ULTRIUM); 3-drive, datacenter-grade RAID-5 array on our primary server; real-time backup to a gigabyte Buffalo Terastation with two pairs of RAID-5 drives; remote real-time copying of our most critical files to a server 1,000+-miles away; snapshots of key files to a secondary server; and, storage of backup tapes in 3 separate locations.
I am uncomfortable with online backup services – I have issues with shipping my critical data off to a service which could fail to perform, go out of business, or worse, let someone else access it – especially if I’m not exactly sure where my data is being held.
I thought this was good enough – until the FireKing MediaVault came along.
FireKing Security Group’s Mediavault/MediaVaultHD Fireproof External Hard Drive is the next level of my obsession with data backup and recoverability.
What is it? Very simple: one or two 250-gigabyte USB hard drives housed in a locked container with a UL® 1-Hour Fire Rating for computer media.
Installation was trivial. I plugged in the USB cables and the two drives were immediately recognized. I installed the included Genie Backup Manager Pro software. Barely five minutes later, I was running my first backup. The software runs in the background and you can set the level of resource consumption to minimize impact on your work. The drives have a power-saver mode, so they are not sucking electricity when you aren’t accessing them.
Now, the bad news: the DataVault looks very much like it should hold a six-pack of beer. It doesn’t. Oh, well… And, for my office, the cables could be around four inches longer. I can live with that.
Bottom line: if you’re as lax as most people about sending your backups off-site, then the MediaVault is an excellent supplement to your data backup strategy. You still need to back up your data off-site, of course, but you can also take solace in that anyone trying to steal your MediaVault will at the least get a backache – it’s a solid, hefty, well-made unit!
Tags: FireKing, MediaVault. data backup
