YuuWaa's hardware flash drives combine serious online storage with a silly name
By Tim Stevens 
posted May 18th 2009 9:27AM
posted May 18th 2009 9:27AM
There is certainly no shortage of backup solutions available for people with data that they'd rather not have disappear, and realistically that's probably everyone reading this, but there's always room for tech that makes the process easier. That's what YuuWaa's thumb drives pledge to do. Plug one into your PC (no Macs allowed) and you'll automatically be prompted to create an account and upload whatever you store on the drive. There are two models, a 4GB "Go" for €19.99 ($27) and a 8GB "Plus" flavor for €29.99 ($40), each offering twice their capacity in online storage -- storage that's free for half a year but thereafter costs between $3 and $6 a month to keep your files alive and, optionally, shared online. For that money you could just buy yourself a new thumb drive a few times a year, and we all know you can never have too many of those.[Via Everything USB]
Well, first, they're nice lookin'. Second, meh.
They are slightly modified design of a 16GB PQI i have but they look better overall with the design and with the blue and white.
Do you even know what a wawa is?
A town in Ontario, I think.
A chain of convenience stores found in eastern Pennsylvania?
Online backup of data is a novel idea, but won't be a realistic alternative for many people until upload speeds are blistering fast: we're talking hundreds of gigs of data in a matter of a few hours, something people can set their PC to upload stuff and have it done by the time they get off of work. And with the way ISP's are throttling service, those days may never come.
Well, if it only backs up data you dump on a 4GB thumbdrive, and does that in the background, the upload shouldn't be an issue. And since it's on the thumbdrive, downloading happens only when you've lost, misplaced, or forgotten it, and need some data; even a couple hundred kB/s is much better than nothing.
Can't say I'm a big fan, though -- if I want online storage, I can script the same concept up for use with my own drives, and try to select a provider based on their storage service, not a hardware gimmick.
Online storage is rather common for hosts. Ie what you discribe to send over 100 of gigs of data to backup already happens. The problem is that you want for your home backupping as well the same capabilities. Though that´s not what this product targets seen as there is only a mere 4 to 8 gb´s of backup space on this thing. That said even 4 Gb´s would still take over here on avarage 9 hours to send so thats rather heavy. But then on the other hand I expect most to backup a few pictures and maybe a movie which can be doen much faster certainly if it supports some on-site compressing techniques.
I dont know about paying for online storage. I already have BT Digital Vault free from my ISP (5GB) and Microsoft Skydrive (20GB), but my favorite is Microsoft Live Mesh (5GB). The client is great and makes backups as you add files.
All for free ;)
There are some very fast online backup solutions out there, too. I know http://www.myotherdrive.com was much faster for me than Mozy or Carbonite for backing up my data. The initial uploads are always kind of slow, but from there on out they upload only the changed files and that is very fast.
Have you looked into Office Live Workspace from Microsoft? You can get 5 GB of storage space for free, and it syncs easily with MS Office. You can access your files from any computer with internet access, which is something you can’t do if you forget to bring your thumb drive with you.
Best,
Kate
MSFT Office Live Outreach
http://workspace.officelive.com