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Data Loss is a Frightening Reality for Computer Users
For anyone who has ever irrevocably lost an important file because of loss or destruction of their computer, or even user error, the importance of good backups cannot be stressed enough.
As technology improves, it becomes harder and harder to make successful backups of our valuable personal data. Most personal collections of documents and digital media are too large to fit on one CD, or even a handful of DVDs. Hard drives are relatively inexpensive and make great high-speed backup devices, but they don’t solve the problem of off-site backups.
Ideally, you want a copy of your data “off-site” so that you will still have it even if disaster strikes your home or office.
Mozy, owned by data storage giant EMC, offers their MozyHome product for just this purpose: to bring off-site backup to everyone who needs it. MozyHome is available for Windows and Mac, but this review will focus on MozyHome for Mac, which recently came out of beta with a 1.0 release.
MozyHome for Mac lists only one system requirement, Mac OS X 10.4 or higher, which translates to OS X Tiger or Leopard. In addition to this requirement, you also need a high-speed Internet connection.
MozyHome works on a simple principle: you install the application and tell it what you would like backed up. MozyHome then works in the background to upload your files to a safe off-site location at Mozy HQ. The Mozy client is small, does not use many system resources, and works silently in the background. After several weeks of constant use, the Mozy software did not cause any errors or system failures.
MozyHome maintains the security of your files: it uses standard 128-bit SSL encryption when uploading files to the Mozy servers, and it stores these files in strong 448-bit containers so that only the owner can decipher them. These are important considerations, especially since the alternative is to implicitly trust Mozy not to nose around in your data while they’ve got it stored for you.
Mozy offers an introductory program that grants 2 GB of off-site storage for your backups for free. This is a good way to check out the service, but if your backup requirements are that low you may be better off burning your data to DVD and taking it to the office or a safe deposit box. For $4.95 a month, MozyHome offers users unlimited storage, which could be ideal for people with a lot of data to store, particularly those ever-growing collections of digital family photos.
Therein lies the main problem with the Mozy concept: consumer broadband Internet connections are asynchronous, which means they are very fast on the download but can be slow on the upload. You might load a web page or download a file with lightning speed, but if you attach that same file to an email to send out and it takes forever to send. While Mozy offers unlimited storage, it is not as useful as it sounds, since with slow upload speeds it can take weeks or months to complete a single backup of a personal data collection large enough to make Mozy sound attractive in the first place. Mozy claims typical users manage 2-4 GB of data backed up per day. A user with as little as 120GB of personal data (not hard to imagine given enough music or photo files) would need a full month to perform a successful backup.
Luckily, once an initial backup is made, Mozy only needs to upload files that change, which will be a smoother and less bandwidth-intensive operations, with occasional spikes, e.g., importing the photos from the latest birthday party.
MozyHome is for personal use only, and neither the free 2GB account nor the $4.95/month unlimited account is allowed by Mozy’s terms of service to be used for business data (not even small home-based business). For businesses, Mozy offers MozyPro, a more expensive product with features geared toward business users.
Recovering your data from Mozy is a fairly straightforward affair. Using either the Mozy software or the Mozy website, a user can pick the files or folders they wish to restore can can either download them or ask for DVDs to be sent (for a fee). Preparing a download-based data restore can take a while, and downloading it can take even longer, though not as long as the upload took. A backup that took a month to upload could take a few days to download, depending on the speed of the Internet, but if you must turn to Mozy to restore your data, chances are something horrible has happened, and waiting a few days to get your files back is a better option than never seeing them again.
MozyHome can provide some peace of mind in the knowledge that your data is locked away somewhere safe, out of reach of local disasters. It can be time-consuming and frustrating to achieve an initial backup of a large chunk of data. At $60/year, MozyHome is an affordable service for as long as you trust EMC to continue operating the service. A potential Mozy user should start first with a free 2GB account and get a feel for backing up and restoring small amounts of data before committing to an unlimited plan.
Check out this unlimited online backup service chosen by Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal
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