In terms of technology I love Apple the most, followed by Kodak. But from this week there’s been a new love in my life - a pink bit of technology called the Pogoplug. And if you had one I think you’d love yours too.
Before I tell you why Pogoplug has joined us let me tell you something about our technology set up. We have six computers installed in an office at the back of the house. They’re a mixture of Mac and Windows PCs. Through these boxes we provide analogue to digital services - cd ripping, photo scanning and video conversion. Over the years the size of the hard drives inside each machine has edged up but we still have two terrabyte drives attached via USB ports onto which we’ve been copying completed work projects. Frankly, it’s all got a bit chaotic. Yes, we can find files when we need to but it takes longer than necessary.
We have also been worrying about data loss while in the middle of photo scanning projects. Large image libraries are forming a bigger percentage of what we do so files are on the computers connected to each scanner for maybe a couple of weeks. If the awful were to happen and one of those drives went down, several days worth of production could be lost. At the moment we back up, manually, each evening but it’s easy to forget.
Our photo scanning service offers an online album for print scanning clients. One of the benefits of the online service is it takes a day or more out of getting digital files back to clients. Photos scanned today can be put online today, and downloaded by clients. It’s proved popular with people doing last minute photo books or who just don’t want to have to wait. We’d like to offer the same service to people who ask us to scan slides and negatives, but we can’t because the maximum file size offered by Zenfolio is too small.
A few weeks ago I started to scratch my head to find a way to first of all consolidate the large backup drives we’ve been using so files could be accessed from any of our computers, to see if there was a way to make large jpg and TIFF files of scanned negatives available to clients and to deliver a backup strategy we presently lack.
My first thought was a NAS device. Network attached storage, as the name suggests, is a hard drive which hangs off your router and is thus open to any network connected computer. We’ve often dealt with these on behalf of clients who want their files accessible through their homes, without the necessity of having to leave a PC switched on all the time. This would have been a solution but all the files from two large drives would have had to be copied across the network to their new home, and the investment made in the present USB drives wasted.
Enter Pogoplug - which turns up to four USB drives into network attached storage, instantly. OK, not exactly instantly, they say it takes one minute to get the system configured, but as close to instantly as makes no difference. When my unit arrived I followed the really simple instructions, got the Pogoplug registered and online, then connected the two USB drives into ports at the back. A few clicks and whirs later and the folders on both drives became available over our network.
I should clarify, you can make connected drives and their contents accessible in one of two ways. First, via an internet web browser interface; second via an extension of the file management system. This means for me I can look on my Mac via browser and see two USB drives. I can create folders, drag and drop, delete contents exactly as I do with the internal hard drive.
Good points? Very simple, elegant extension of file management system, very fast even though the main Mac access to the Pogoplug is via a wi-fi connection rather than hard wired ethernet. I can add much more capacity just by adding low-cost USB drives.
I am knocked out by the free iPad app. Not only can I access conventional data files but it manages streaming music. Sitting here now my iPad gets a signal from the floor above me, which is sent out of the house, into the office, the file is accessed though the Pogoplug and then sent back the same way. Wirelessly, faultlessly for over an hour.
We’ve yet to try the feature that should let clients access their digital files and download them direct to their systems, but if that works as it says on the box, it will be a big step forward.
Bad points? As far as I can see the Pogoplug backup software doesn’t replicate the folder structure we have on each system. Via the backup program I could restore one or more files but I can’t for the moment work out if it’s possible to restore a folder containing one clients work. That’s a very small issue, just dragging the client folder onto the relevant hard drive via the Mac file management system achieves what we need. I would have liked an FTP facility as from time to time people need to send us big files. It would have been great if they could have dropped them directly into our storage system.
Going forward we need to organise our file storage, so one drive will be designated for music and the other for photos. We’ll try to find a file naming system that will enable us to use Pogoplug’s backup software so we can recover a full set of clients image files during the course of a project, and then offer those for the client to download when the files are bigger than Zenfolio can handle. I’m feeling very positive about Pogoplug, can’t think why I didn’t buy one before.
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