Advantages: Price, slick client, extensive features, set it and forget it automatic backups Disadvantages: Home version can't backup mapped drives
Mozy is an online/remote backup company, which basically means you run a client on your computer (PC or Mac), select what you want to backup, and it then automatically and securely copies everything you've selected up to their servers for safekeeping, and from then on automatically updates any changes you make to your documents.
First the price - there are a few tiers of service you can buy from Mozy, the free MozyHome service, which ... ...The paid MozyHome service, which currently is $4.95 per month (or $54.45 per year, which gives you a month free, or 2 yearly subscriptions which save even more) and gives you "unlimited" storage. Finally, the MozyPro service, which is aimed at businesses, and is a lot more expensive. These prices are comparable with
I've been using the paid MozyHome service for just over 2 years now, and to demonstrate how good I think it ... more
Mozy is an online/remote backup company, which basically means you run a client on your computer (PC or Mac), select what you want to backup, and it then automatically and securely copies everything you've selected up to their servers for safekeeping, and from then on automatically updates any changes you make to your documents.
First the price - there are a few tiers of service you can buy from Mozy, the free MozyHome service, which is FREE, and provides you with 2GB of backup storage. The paid MozyHome service, which currently is $4.95 per month (or $54.45 per year, which gives you a month free, or 2 yearly subscriptions which save even more) and gives you "unlimited" storage. Finally, the MozyPro service, which is aimed at businesses, and is a lot more expensive. These prices are comparable with
I've been using the paid MozyHome service for just over 2 years now, and to demonstrate how good I think it is, I've recently subscribed for another year.
As described before, you simply install the client on your computer, and select what documents or files you want to keep safe (from any fixed hard drive - mapped drives only work in MozyPro) - the client automatically selects standard files to backup based on file type (such as .doc, .jpg, etc) but you can add to this, change it completely, or choose what actual folders to backup. It's very flexible.
The files are stored on Mozy's servers in encrypted form, which means no one can look at them without the key. You have the option to encrypt them with an automatic key, which means Mozy will look after it and there are no fears about losing it, or you can store it with your own key (created from a pass-phrase/password). The advantage with this is you are completely assured that no one apart from you will know the pass-phrase, but the disadvantage is if you lose or forget the key/pass-phrase, no one - not even Mozy - can access your data or get it back. Personally, I feel Mozy are a secure and trustworthy company, and I'm not storing anything particularly secret anyway (photos, music and documents/correspondence), so I let them look after the key.
The client then performs the initial backup, which depending on your broadband upload speed and the amount of data you've selected, can take a while - on one of my accounts I store about 25GB of data, and this took a few days for the initial backup to complete. It's important to bear in mind however that this is all automatically handled in the background by the client, and you can get on with other stuff, or even switch off your computer, without fear of wrecking the backup.
Once the initial backup is complete, the client will automatically synchronise any changes or alterations made to your selected files with the server. The terrific aspect is even if you have a multi-gigabyte file backed up, if you make a change to it, the client is clever enough to only upload the changes, so you don't have to re-upload the entire changed file. As mentioned, this all automatically happens in the background, so it's entirely "set it and forget it".
If something happens which means you need to restore from backup, you have a few options; if your computer (and existing client) is still running and you just need to restore files, you can select them to restore directly from the client - this method also allows for versioning, which means you can access all the backed up versions of a file for up to 30 days ago, just in case you saved changes to a file which you didn't mean to. If your computer/client isn't running anymore (such as after complete data loss, or a hard drive dying), through the Mozy website you can get the system to zip up all your data, which is then available for you to download to wherever you need to. The final option is to get Mozy to burn your data onto DVD(s) and post them to you - however, this is obviously chargeable and can get expensive - the former options are free.
Compared to the competition, Mozy is priced similarly, has a far slicker and much easier to use client than anything else I've seen, is much more flexible, and is backed up by EMC who are a one of the leading storage companies in the world.
If this review has convinced you to sign up, visit Mozy here: https://mozy.com/?code=AEVZW2
