Computers

Backup Your Data with Mozy

I while back I had a dilemma. Through a year or two of annoying people with constant flashes, I had accumulated around 15 Gigabytes of pictures. These pictures are very important to me, and I really didn’t want to lose them, so I would periodically back up to DVD. However, I was always aware that if my stuff was stolen or if there was a fire, that backing up to DVD didn’t really do me a whole lot of good.

That’s when I went looking for an online solution and found Mozy.com, which I recommend if you run into a similar conundrum. For $4.95 a month, you can back up an unlimited amount of data. I currently have around 20 GB stored online. Then, if you need a file, you can either go to the networked drive that shows up in My Computer, download the files in a zip file, or you can pay extra and have the files burned to DVD and FedExed to you.

If you are worried about security, you have two options. You can use Mozy’s 448-bit encryption key (which is what I use) or you can enter one of your own. What those choices mean is that the data is encrypted either way, but if you use Mozy’s key then they would be able to get into it if you ever needed them to. If you use one of your own, then if you lose the key your dead in the water if you needed to get to your data. The former is less secure, but easier to manage.

I’ve also had good experience with tech support. Granted that is as a business customer at work, where we also use Mozy.

Of course, Mozy hasn’t been without its share of issues. For instance, with the business version at work I’ve found that if you have a single file then you have to have 130% the size of that file in free space so that it can encrypt the file. So if you have a 1MB file, then it will use 1.3MB of disk space to create the temp file during encryption. Once it is uploaded and sent online, the the temp file is erased. Well, that’s fine for a small file, but when you have an 18 Gigabyte Exchange .edb file, then it’s not so good. So, if you have a single file that is very large, you’ll need to have the free disk space to back it up.

Also, I do run into the occasional server error where Mozy’s connection messes up.

For me, though, Mozy has been a great security blanket to have. I don’t worry so much about my data because it’s backed up elsewhere. You should still do your local backups, though, so don’t neglect that. If you want to learn more, check out Mozy.com. They offer a free version that will give you 2 gigabytes of storage.

© 2008 Baba’s Blog.