The Raspberry Pi board is a delightful device. I use it at home to play music. I just thought about what it would take to use it for file-storage, specifically, as a backup server.

The problem: One can plug in a harddisk and copy some files. But unless the harddisk is in a different place, it’s still vulnerable. If thieves come, they might steal your computer AND your backup-disk. If there is a fire, same problem.

Since the NSA has somewhat killed cloud-computing (or would you stil use Dropbox, etc.?), there’s a need for a new strategy.

Here’s the idea: The Buddy Cloud^TM.

In my protoype the following things are needed:

• Raspberry Pi
• USB-Disk
• A buddy with the same equipment

Of course the equipment can vary, but the idea is simple: You keep his backups, he keeps yours. Encrypted, so he can’t read your data and you can’t read his.

(The device should always be plugged in so something low-power like the Pi seems useful.)

The syncing can be as simple as FTP, but it can get more sophisticated with rsync and more advanced algorithms.

What do you think? Buddies helping each other out by providing offsite-backups to each other.

Welcome to the post-cloud-computing world.