MiMedia Review

MiMedia at a Glance

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Our Rating

3.75 / 5 stars
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Price:

  • Click here to save 18% on MiMedia!
  • Free 7GB – No Credit Card required.
  • 100GB: $4.99/month, $49.00/year.
  • 250GB: $9.99/month, $99.99/year.
  • 500GB: $20.00/month, $199.00/year.
  • 1TB: $35.00/month, $325.00/year.

Pros:

  • Multiple computers on one account.
  • Shuttle Drive to seed backup.
  • Supports external hard drives.
  • Easy-to-use interface configuration.
  • Steaming of media.
  • Real time backup. Always running in the background.
  • Supports Windows
  • File Sharing
  • Apps for iPhone/iPad.
  • Larger storage plans available.
  • Web access.

Cons:

  • No file versioning
  • No Mac or Linux client.
  • Upload seemed slower than other services.

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Full MiMedia Review

MiMedia is a new kid on the block as far as online backup and storage goes, but they have some big ideas about how to use the cloud. The company only started in 2010 but they are already making waves in online backup with their Shuttle drive service and media streaming.

Installation
After creating your account on their website you can download the desktop application. After saving it to your hard drive it is just a matter of double clicking the MiMedia installer icon. Depending on what version of Windows you are using you might have to allow the installer to run. Installation is painless and quick. I was surprised at how quickly the login screen was presented and I was able to login to my account with the user name and login I created on the website.

Backup
After installation and logging in the desktop client presented me with the MiMedia setup wizard. Clicking Next took me to the next screen to select which drives I wanted to include in my backup. To my surprise I was presented with both the local C drive and my networked H drive. You have three options to select your files: Basic, Recommended and Advanced. The basic level says it will select photos, music and video folders. The recommended setting includes the basic settings plus your documents. The advanced setting lets you select spcific folders for backup.

I decided to try the advanced settings and was able to select specific folders to backup on both drives since I did not want to backup everything on my computer plus I like to know exactly what is being backed up. The folder selection is simple, just select the folders you want backed up and click next.

The next screen asks you how you want to perform you initial backup, over the Internet or using a Shuttle Drive. A Shuttle Drive is MiMedia’s fancy name for using a hard drive to seed your backup with them. They will send you a portable hard drive for you to copy your data on that you send back to them. Once they get it they will move your data from the Shuttle Drive to their servers. A security deposit is required on the drive, but postage is covered both ways. I selected to backup over the Internet since this was not a large backup, plus the Shuttle Drive service is not available in Canada yet.

Clicking OK will save the backup settings and begin the backup. I selected just under 3GB of data to backup. The desktop client shows you how much data you have chosen to backup on the client status screen. You can also select the amount of bandwidth the desktop client will use. You don’t need to schedule the backup since it is a real time backup. The client is always running backing up your files. It might be nice to be able to set some defaults for bandwidth usage, but offer a simple pause the backup button to just stop the backup for a little while.

I was never actively using the computer while the backup was taking place and I had set the bandwidth settings to 100% but the backup did seem to take longer than it should have. The status screen does not give you much information about what file it is currently backing up, or how fast the backup is running. You do get a total already backed up, but the client tells you very little while the backup is running. This is perhaps only and issue with the initial backup since subsequent backups will not take as long.

Restoring
Restoring data from MiMedia is a little different that some other services. I could find no way to restore data through the client, but through My Computer there is a MiMedia drive that you can use to browse the files you have backed up to quickly copy the files you want to restore. I could find no way of restoring a file from an earlier version. Restoring from the web is also a little different than some services. To restore your backup you select click the Backups menu and are shown the devices you can restore from. To restore you just click the Restore Backup button. You do not get to choose the files or folders you want to restore, you get the complete backup as a .zip file.

It would be nice to see more options for restoring. The lack of being able to restore from an older version is a concern. Perhaps I just missed the option, but the ability to restore a file from a past version could be very important case you accidentially erase the contents of a file and save it. That new empty file would then overwrite the previous good backup. Your restore would then be useless since it would be your empty file.

Other Features
Media Streaming
MiMedia offers the ability to directly stream your files to other devices. This is great if you are backing up music, videos and photos. You can easily login using any web browsers and browse your photos, play your videos and music right in the browser. This is a great feature for those people that like to have their media with them whereever they go or if you just want to listen to that new MP3 file you bought the day before.

File Sharing
You can share files using the web site. Just login, find the photo and videos that you want to share. Click the share button and enter an email address to send that person a link to view those files or album. You can also send the files directly to Facebook or other social networking websites. The Facebook integration is great for those people use Facebook to share photos and home videos with family and friends. It will save you time uploading them to Facebook. It would be great if this was more intergrated with Windows Explorer so you could share with a right click, similar to Dropbox.

m.drive
This is what MiMedia calls uploading files from the web. You can use it to upload files from your web browser to your MiMedia account. Just clcik Upload file and you can easily upload a file to your MiMedia account. It will show on your m:drive on your desktop as well so you can easily use this to send files to yourself from a remote location.

Mobile Apps
Currently MiMedia has iPhone/iPad applications and I was told that BlackBerry and Android applications are coming. This makes it easy for people to easily access thier files on their mobile device and stream those media files as well. I do not have an Apple device to try these apps out with, but I did try the website on a Samsung tablet and was able to browse my photos and play a short video.

Overall
MiMedia is not just a backup service. It is a step in the right direction to move your digital life to the cloud so you can access your music, photos and videos wherever you are with whatever device you have. The easy web and media access makes it easy to access your media whereever you are, but there are still some limits. I tried accessing the web area with my Wii and could not. It would be great to be able to stream my photos, videos and music using the Wii or any console straight to the living room. Backing up seemed slow. It might have been my connection, but they do offer the Shuttle drive so you can seed your backup. MiMedia does offer storage plans with the ability to grow as you add more media and thier pricing is not outragous. Restoring files via the web is an all or nothing and could be difficult if you have lots of files. Lack of file versions is a concern. Hopefully they will add file versioning soon to make the backup portion of their service more attractive.

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