How to: Access your home data while traveling

By Elmer Thomas On September 1, 2009 · 11 Comments

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Reducing what you take when you travel not only saves your shoulders from having to lug them around, it also drastically minimizes the chances of loss, theft or damage.

Feature photo by **msk. Photo Above by DeclanTM

ANYONE WHO TRAVELS frequently has probably built a lengthy list of tips and tricks to help minimize the bulk of items they need to take with them.

Nowadays, many people carry a laptop along, but even the most robust desktop replacement versions have hard drives that pale in comparison to a desktop-class external hard drive for storing data. Many technologies such as external hard drives that were developed for corporate America have seen their fruits trickle down into the home market.

While one might assume I’m suggesting you carry an external drive with you, I’m introducing a more efficient way of accessing all your files while on the road.

In a business environment, it wouldn’t make sense to attach an external hard drive to every workstation especially when sharing data is essential, so Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices were created. NAS devices are external hard drives that plug into a router via Ethernet cables, allowing authorized users on the network access to the same data.

Hard drive manufacturer Western Digital rolled out two feature-packed NAS devices called the My Book World Edition (2 terrabytes in size) and the My Book World Edition II that does everything a NAS device should do.

One of the most interesting features for travelers is the My Book’s built-in remote access technology called MioNet.

Simply load the MioNet software onto your laptop or NetBook and have instant access to everything you keep stored at home or in the office, whenever you want it, wherever you happen to be.

Installation is a breeze and using the software is extremely intuitive. Additionally, with as much as 2 terabytes (TB) of storage capacity, you can keep thousands of photos, tons of home movies, enough music to fill your ears for weeks and all the other important documents you need with instant access anywhere.

If you travel often and need to access your digital data on a regular basis, stop hauling it around with you on an external hard drive, and opt for instant remote access to your digital data, all kept securely at home.

Do you have any data related travel tips? Please share them below.

About The Author

Elmer Thomas

Elmer blogs primarily at ThinkingSerious.com which focuses on programming, design, business and productivity content for tech entrepreneurs living in a 2.0 world. That is, when he is not tickling his entrepreneur itch or traveling.

http://matadortravel.com/travel-community/vmcalves vmcalves

How useful! Accessing home data is such an important thing for travelers (especially ones away from home for long periods of time). Thanks for sharing!
travis

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

http://www.dropbox.com
http://facingmyworld.com Guillermo Guerini

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.
http://wayworded.blogspot.com/ Hal

Give me terabytes! This is very cool.
Steven Partington

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
Ross

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.
http://thelonglayover.blogspot.com Carlo

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?

http://curiousjohn.com curiousjohn

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.

http://www.stefnitert.com Stef

Also dropbox for me. I can highly recommend it.
Chic

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

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

How to: Access your home data while traveling

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