Mozy Online Backup


One of the things I am paranoid about is losing my work. I have had hard drives die on me in the past and ever since I have been pretty good about backing up the data I really need and want to keep. It helps that backing up has gotten easier with large hard drives and faster DVD writers. Recently however I have been searching for an off-site backup solution for one of my local computer support clients. The plan we were going to use was to map an SSH drive in Windows and use a daily Xcopy batch file to copy all of the data to the off-site server. It works but it was not as reliable as I wanted it to be. It had a tendency to simply drop the connection before the incremental backup was completed.

The next thing I did of course was to Google ”online backup” and I started to check out the various services that I found. I tried several of the programs and finally settled on Mozy online backup. While it is Windows only software, it offered three levels of service. There is a free version for up to two gigabytes for personal, non-commercial use, MozyHome which offers an unlimited backup solution for personal, non-commercial use at only $4.95/month and MozyPro for business customers starting at $3.95 each per month plus $0.50/GB per month for storage. For a business to back up 10GB is just less than $10/month.

A lot of the online backup offerings were similar, the one thing that pushed Mozy over the top was support for networked drives in MozyPro. On my own little office here I have my one remaining Windows machine that really does nothing anymore, except make backups of my files from my Linux desktop over a Samba share. Using MozyPro it also is able to backup all of those files remotely as well. Now I have a local backup of my files in case of hard drive failure on my desktop, and a remote online backup in case there is some other kind of catastrophe here at my house. The initial backup to Mozy can take a little while, but once you get the first backup done it does not take very long to do the other incremental backups.

If you are like me and run your own small business and want to have an easy off site backup solution, or you just want to backup all of your personal files and photos give Mozy a try. I have been using it just over a month and have been very happy with it. I hope I never have to use it to restore my files but it is good to know that my files are safe in case something happens.

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