Mozy on over for some backups
(ok, worst title ever. I apologize)
Late last week I received an invite to try out Mozy, an online backup solution still in beta (natch). I had last looked at it, and other options, back in February when I trying to find something interesting to use for online backup and/or storage. At the time, Mozy didn’t really grab my attention… but frankly, I can’t remember what the details were almost half a year ago. This time around it did hook me in enough to have a look.
This appears to be the closest yet to what I’ve been searching for quite some time: Dead simple, lightweight little app that just backs up data to an offsite server. The free plan gets you 2GB to play with. You can pay a bit more (just shy of $5/month) and get 30GB storage. Referrals can gain you a bit more storage (an extra GB for every 4).
What you get:
- 2GB of free, secure storage (Get more through Mozy Plus or our referral program!)
- Open/locked file support
- Block-level differential backup
- 128-bit SSL support (to secure your data during transport)
- 448-bit Blowfish encryption (to secure your data on our server)
- Continuous or scheduled backup options
The first backup was painful — my backup set was about 450MB and with my provider’s upload cap that took quite a few hours. Subsequent backups are differentials though and go quite a bit faster. I’ve also tested some restores and have been impressed. This thing is really quite simple to use and work with.
Once you’re set up a little tray app quietly idles until it is time to do the next scheduled backup. It then pops to life and starts three tasks: determine what needs to be backed up, encrypt those and send those to the server. When done it displays a little message and goes back to sleep. I appear to have two mozy* processes using 10MB and 3MB respectively and I think I’m ok with 13MB for free offsite backup action.
Stuff to be aware of:
- Nothing is truly free, right? And that applies to the free flavor of Mozy as well.
And I quote, “By signing up you agree to accept the Mozy weekly email newsletter, which may contain advertisements.” As with any online product, be sure to read the Privacy Policy and ensure you’re happy with what you see. - Windows XP only at this time. NTFS preferred. (see the main FAQ for more info)
[disclaimer: The links to Mozy in this article are referral links. They cost you nothing, but gain me a bit of extra storage if you sign up.]
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Possibly Related posts:
- Mozy Updates
- Things I Wish I’d Thought of Regarding Online Backups
- Mozy Issues?
- Scattered Home Backups
- TrueCrypt & SyncToy & Mozy – Almost a Great Idea
Comments
12 Responses to “Mozy on over for some backups”
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Referrals and Ads
Flair and Sparklies
Admit it… you’re loving the reflection of the images aren’t you?
I’ll click your referral link if you’ll click mine.
I’m surprised by how cavalier you are about 13Meg memory footprint when you kvetched about the mysterious Firefox memory expansion and contraction elsewhere here.
I downloaded and installed Mozy. I’m a paranoiac and kinda freaked when it decided what to back up for me… and it included financial data by default, so I unchecked some work and financial stuff, aimed it at innocuous folders and unleashed the hounds of back-up.
What I wish it would do is allow me to access the data from another computer… think automated back-up to a folder in box.net and that’s what I wanted it to be. It’s not, but for what it is… it appears to do it well.
Ya know? I can tolerate 13MB if it is predictable. My FF beefs are more to the fact that memory usage is all over the map — and only ever increases! Earlier today, with FF 1.5.0.5 and ALL tabs closed… I was over 100MB used. Seriously, wtf? And this is my favorite browser. gads.
It’s high time someone spoke with the voice of reason about this “mozy.” This guy has written an entertaining expose about them, and makes a lot of sense.
Observations on “the anti mozy” article.
1) It is a blogger with 2 posts so far – the first one as an introduction.
1.5) Entertaining article with some interesting thoughts. Just factor in the potential for it to be (literally) an anti-mozi blog. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
2) There are a large number or paragraphs ranting about the difficulties of restoring data. All of which are negated if the mozy client is (re)installed on the “restoree” machine. no zips.
I thought that Zoli had a really good response for the Anti Mozy, kind of along the lines of what you had to say about it, chris.
http://www.zoliblog.com/blog/Blogging/_archives/2006/8/12/2225028.html
As a matter-of-fact, “anti-mozy”, a.k.a. “The Online Backup Advisor” has since disappeared – his attack blog no longer exists.
Well, I guess he ran out of advice.
There are a number of online backup services out there including ours. Many use the delta bit technology which after the initial full backup does incremental backups but only the bits in the file that have changed.
We will never use this technology as it requires several files to restore the full file version and if one of those files is corrupted – no restore.
We have found most of our customers after the initial full backup, the regular nightly backup is usually between 7 and 10 minutes for each customer.
Be careful in choosing your online backup service. Many are offering tons of space at a low price, but, read the fine print as many are restricting the user on the restore process. For example some – offering tons of space and can only be used with the Windows XP OS. Further, you are restricted on the number of restores per month. If I or one of my customers have suffered from a data loss, I want my data NOW and not have to worry about how many restores or whatever. A customer needs to get their computer and files back ASAP so they can do business again.
The most important thing to remember is to test to be sure you can recover your using the software BEFORE a computer or other type of data loss.
Mike
http://akronbackups.com
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