7 ms·

For my taste, there are too few information on the site. Here are some questions I am having: 1. What kind of drive will you send around? Spinning disk? How mu

by secure 14y ago

For my taste, there are too few information on the site. Here are some questions I am having: 1. What kind of drive will you send around? Spinning disk? How much capacity? 2. Is there a special software that customers have to use or could I dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb? 3. In case a full clone is okay (see question 2), which filesystems are supported when I want to retrieve a single file online? Also, here are two observations: 1. It occurs to me that the time for a full backup is much higher than an incremental backup. You should probably cover on the page whether you support incremental backups or not. Having a slow computer for many hours could be a deal-breaker. 2. The claim about other backup systems trying to force some kind of organization scheme on you (can’t quote since the page seems down) is vague. I have used various backup solutions (bacula, obnam, custom rsync scripts, bup) and none of them has forced me to do any re-organization of my data.

jacquesc 14y ago
Thanks for the great feedback. Yeah, we need a lot more explanation. Basically the point we need to get across is that you receive a drive and you can put data on it however you want. We provide a helper for you, but if you want you can use whatever backup mechanism you'd like. We just take the data and sync it to Amazon Glacier then resecure the drive.
- eps 14y ago
  A list of supported countries is a must have.
- secure 14y ago
  So essentially you are doing what Amazon already offers (http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/ http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/), just cheaper (currently) and with a regular schedule? I hope you have a lot going/planned in the UX part and would love to hear about it :-).
- pudquick 14y ago
  > We just take the data and sync it An image of the drive? Files on the drive? More data would be helpful. Do we ask for a particular drive size and you send it? What if I've got a 2TB drive with TrueCrypt volumes and I just dd it over to the drive you provide? Do you put the entire drive image on Amazon Glacier? Or are you expecting a readable filesystem?
- ukd1 14y ago
  Glacier...uh; it's horribly expensive for retrievals...? http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/faqs/#How_will_I_be_charged_when_retrieving_large_amounts_of_data_from_Amazon_Glacier http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/faqs/#How_will_I_be_charged_wh...
  - jacquesc 14y ago
    Shit... you're right. We should have checked that, we'll have to find a better solution (S3 might work but also might be too expensive).
    - gsibble 14y ago
      I've actually been researching this recently. The cheapest I found (better than S3) was a machine at http://www.hetzner.de/ http://www.hetzner.de/ loaded with drives.
      - ukd1 14y ago
        This also sucks; you have to maintain your own hardware and make the files / blocks redundant. Whilst possible, it's certainly going to add complexity and overheads; RiakCS (http://basho.com/products/riakcs/ http://basho.com/products/riakcs/) springs to mind.
    - ukd1 14y ago
      S3 with RRS would be better, but the economics may not work out. However, unlike normal internet based backups, you can't replace corrupted / lost files sneakily, well not until the next backup-drive arrives. Also, be aware that you'll not be able to de-dupe files across users (this also has issues if you could) as you're encrypted. Also, if the encryption key is different, you won't even be able to do this cross backups...which will suck.
    - eps 14y ago
      Why don't you keep a drive per customer (in a bank if needs be) and upload it to Glacier for redundancy? Couple it with making a copy of the drive when you drop it in a mail for a customer, and you have two levels of recovery at any given moment, one - instant, another - from Glacier.
- larrys 14y ago
  The business concept is fine and there is a market for this but HN is not the correct market imo. More importantly you also need to put some contact info on the site and not use "whois privacy" for your domain name. How is anybody supposed to know who they are dealing with and why they should trust you? I mean seriously why in the world would anyone send someone who is (virtually anonymous) a copy of their hard drive (not that putting contact info alleviates my fears or can't be faked) but it is certainly a step in the right direction. As a social engineering test I wonder what the results would be if some official looking company sent 100 hard drives out to random small companies along with software to clone the hard drive and a postage paid envelope (forgetting mail fraud etc issues or with an overseas address)
  - salman89 14y ago
    Show HN isn't about advertising to an HN market. It is about showing HN what you have built.
    - blantonl 14y ago
      Exactly, and the OP is getting good feedback.
      - jacquesc 14y ago
        Yep, HN is one of the few places to get honest (read: harsh!) feedback from smart people to help improve a very early stage product. Thanks again to everyone!

by secure 14y ago

jacquesc 14y ago

Thanks for the great feedback. Yeah, we need a lot more explanation. Basically the point we need to get across is that you receive a drive and you can put data on it however you want. We provide a helper for you, but if you want you can use whatever backup mechanism you'd like. We just take the data and sync it to Amazon Glacier then resecure the drive.

eps 14y ago
A list of supported countries is a must have.
secure 14y ago
So essentially you are doing what Amazon already offers (http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/ http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/), just cheaper (currently) and with a regular schedule? I hope you have a lot going/planned in the UX part and would love to hear about it :-).
pudquick 14y ago
> We just take the data and sync it An image of the drive? Files on the drive? More data would be helpful. Do we ask for a particular drive size and you send it? What if I've got a 2TB drive with TrueCrypt volumes and I just dd it over to the drive you provide? Do you put the entire drive image on Amazon Glacier? Or are you expecting a readable filesystem?
ukd1 14y ago
Glacier...uh; it's horribly expensive for retrievals...? http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/faqs/#How_will_I_be_charged_when_retrieving_large_amounts_of_data_from_Amazon_Glacier http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/faqs/#How_will_I_be_charged_wh...
- jacquesc 14y ago
  Shit... you're right. We should have checked that, we'll have to find a better solution (S3 might work but also might be too expensive).
  - gsibble 14y ago
    I've actually been researching this recently. The cheapest I found (better than S3) was a machine at http://www.hetzner.de/ http://www.hetzner.de/ loaded with drives.
    - ukd1 14y ago
      This also sucks; you have to maintain your own hardware and make the files / blocks redundant. Whilst possible, it's certainly going to add complexity and overheads; RiakCS (http://basho.com/products/riakcs/ http://basho.com/products/riakcs/) springs to mind.
  - ukd1 14y ago
    S3 with RRS would be better, but the economics may not work out. However, unlike normal internet based backups, you can't replace corrupted / lost files sneakily, well not until the next backup-drive arrives. Also, be aware that you'll not be able to de-dupe files across users (this also has issues if you could) as you're encrypted. Also, if the encryption key is different, you won't even be able to do this cross backups...which will suck.
  - eps 14y ago
    Why don't you keep a drive per customer (in a bank if needs be) and upload it to Glacier for redundancy? Couple it with making a copy of the drive when you drop it in a mail for a customer, and you have two levels of recovery at any given moment, one - instant, another - from Glacier.
larrys 14y ago
The business concept is fine and there is a market for this but HN is not the correct market imo. More importantly you also need to put some contact info on the site and not use "whois privacy" for your domain name. How is anybody supposed to know who they are dealing with and why they should trust you? I mean seriously why in the world would anyone send someone who is (virtually anonymous) a copy of their hard drive (not that putting contact info alleviates my fears or can't be faked) but it is certainly a step in the right direction. As a social engineering test I wonder what the results would be if some official looking company sent 100 hard drives out to random small companies along with software to clone the hard drive and a postage paid envelope (forgetting mail fraud etc issues or with an overseas address)
- salman89 14y ago
  Show HN isn't about advertising to an HN market. It is about showing HN what you have built.
  - blantonl 14y ago
    Exactly, and the OP is getting good feedback.
    - jacquesc 14y ago
      Yep, HN is one of the few places to get honest (read: harsh!) feedback from smart people to help improve a very early stage product. Thanks again to everyone!