Research by Seagate has found 45 per cent of Australian SMBs have lost work from not backing-up effectively.
Of that amount, Seagate senior field applications engineer, Sam Zavaglia, said half have lost clients work and/or it had a financial impact for them.
“20 per cent of SMBs also experienced damage to their reputation by not having the information they needed,” he said.
Of the reasons why SMBs do not back-up, 38 per cent said they do not have the time and 19 per cent were confused by technology.
“People consider NAS [network-attached storage] as an IT-driven device aimed at an IT guru,” Zavaglia said.
30 per cent of respondents lost data by only saving to an internal drive, which Zavaglia points out is not backing-up, as the data will disappears the instant the drive fails.
While 55 per cent are backing-up to an external drive, Zavaglia said the computer is not “all of your data anymore” and content on mobile devices is also at stake.
Backing up to NAS is one way to avoid losing data, and the research results come when Seagate has introduced two new devices.
Seagate NAS is an entry level product with support up to 25 users, while NAS Pro supports up to 50, and Zavaglia said they have been design to be easy to configure and cross over to the home office market.
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Room for growth
The NAS boxes come with Seagate 5,900 rpm drives, and there is the option to buy diskless versions.
Seagate’s 7,200 rpm Barracuda desktop drive is designed specifically for single drive and not suited for NAS, though Zavaglia said the vendor's 7,200 rpm Enterprise Capacity drives are an option.
“If users want to put Enterprise Capacity or better drives in their NAS, they can buy the diskless and but the drives separately,” he said.
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“If a user wants to put a different brand, they can do that with the diskless version.”
Zavaglia points out a NAS pre-loaded the drives tends to be more cost-effective overall, and there is the added convenience of plug-and-play.
“If an IT person has to go an implement a few of these, they don’t want to be mucking around with different drives and support from different vendors,” he said.
“They can buy a complete solution from one supplier, turn it on, and it is ready to go.”
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The NAS products have been tested for compatability with all Seagate drives, though Zavaglia recommends the device be fitted with NAS drives for performance and reliability.
Pricing of the NAS and NAS Pro start at $399 and $749 respectively.
Patrick Budmar covers consumer and enterprise technology breaking news for IDG Communications. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_budmar.
