Review Summary
Our Rating:
Pros:
- Inexpensive
- 2GB Free Online Backup - Mozy
- Simple to use
- Lots of restoration options
- Great customer service
- Mac and Windows versions available
Cons:
- Slow
- Free 2GB runs out fast.
- MozyPro is required for advanced features.
Detailed Review: Mozy Backup
There are a number of backup solutions for home users that allow for large amounts of data (think movies and photos) to be stored off site. Mozy is the market leader, and has the benefit of being owned by the publicly traded computer storage giant, EMC.
On the surface, what Mozy does is simple. You install the program on your computer, tell it what programs to backup, and it does the rest. Mozy will continuously monitor your files and send backups over the internet to a secure storage facility. If you ever need a backup, you just log in, and copy the files back down to your computer.
Installation
Signing up for Mozy is pretty easy and will be familiar to most users. It all starts when you click on a link like this one:
Mozy Unlimited Backup - $4.95/Month!
First, you'll need to provide an active email account and choose a password. Mozy then sends a confirmation email with a link that will take you to a download page.
At the download page, you simply choose your operating system (Windows or Mac) and download the installation package. It weighed in at just over 5 MB - a quick and painless download.
The installer is likewise very much a standard process. Just complete the wizard and let it do it's thing. There's not much to comment on regarding installation, because it goes very smoothly. The total time from my first click to having Mozy installed on my laptop was about 2 minutes.
Configuration
There isn't much to configure with Mozy. The interface provides two options: You can backup pre-defined "Backup Sets", or you can browse though your files and select individual files and folders to back up. Either way, it's a straightforward process. I was somewhat amazed at just how quickly I racked up a few hundred megabytes worth of data to back up. Throw in movies and pictures and you will quickly outgrow the 2GB free account.
Advanced users are offered the opportunity to use their own encryption key, but Mozy recommends using theirs. (If you don't know what this means, just go with Mozy's recommendation.)
Once you're configured, you begin your initial backup. This can take some time. For heavy users with hundreds of gigabytes, it can take weeks. My 300 megabytes took a little over a half an hour.
Restore
Where any backup system really needs to shine is on restoration. Mozy offers three ways to do this. You can go to their website and download your files there. You can download your files from within the Mozy program. Or, you can go to the Mozy website and order DVD's with your files on them. This third option can come in handy if you have lots of files to download and don't want to wait for them to restore over your internet connection.
Notes
It's important to realize what Mozy is and isn't. Mozy works by constantly checking your files to see if it needs to back any of them up. When it finds one that needs an update, it sends it over the internet to Mozy's storage system until you need it later. Because this is all done over the internet, the uploads and downloads can be a little slow. It's not like attaching a hard drive to your computer and copying files. But that's the beauty of the Mozy system - you don't have to spend a couple hundred dollars on a external hard drive. You don't have to worry about things like theft or fire or floods at your home, because your backup isn't at your home.
So, know Mozy's limitations. It is a slow and continuous backup process, but it's one that works well with very little effort on your part. With several restoration options, Mozy has a well thought out disaster recovery plan.
Case Studies: Reviews by Real Users
User #1:The Casual User
Technical Skill: Basic
Amount to back up:About 30GB
Operating System: Windows XP
Product Used: Mozy Home Unlimited
Rating:
"We set up Mozy because we lost some photos of our grandchildren. We use it to protect our pictures now"
After our old computer crashed, we decided that we needed a way to backup our files, but we didn't know where to start. Our son-in-law, who understands this sort of thing better than we do, recommended that we try Mozy's free version. He told us that it would store our most important documents online and that since we didn't have too many files, that it would be free.
Setting up the program was easy - it only took a few minutes. We told it which folders to backup and Mozy did it's thing. Once we realized how little space 2GB is, we opted for the paid version.
It's nice to know that our photos are protected no matter what, since the backups aren't stored on our computer. If we need to backup more things, we'd certainly use Mozy's for-pay version.
User #2:The Mac User
Technical Skill: Advanced
Amount to back up: 1.5 GB
Operating System: Mac OSX
Product Used: Mozy Home Free (less than 2GB)
Rating:
"I have an external hard drive to backup my files, but I also use Mozy to keep offsite backups of my most important files"
I've lost enough data over the years to know that I need to backup my info. I currently use Apple's Time Machine, which works like a champ. But after I lost a computer and backup drive to a power surge, I've come to see the value of off-site storage.
So I have a two tiered system. Everything gets backed up locally by Time Machine, and then the most important files get backed up on Mozy as well. I'm cheap, so since Mozy is free for the first 2 GB, it fit my needs exactly.
Setting it up on my MacBook Pro was simple - you just install it, tell it what to backup and let it rip. It really couldn't be any simpler.
Of course, it can take a good amount of time to upload all of your files. My 2GB, for example took about 45 minutes. This is more a limitation of the internet connection (we use a typical cable setup) than Mozy. There just isn't enough bandwidth to move huge amounts of data around quickly. But for the security of offsite storage, I'm more than willing to put up with the speed limitations.
Now, that's for uploads. For downloads, I don't want to be waiting a week for my files. Thankfully, Mozy seems to have thought this through, and has a few options on getting your data back more quickly.
At the end of the day, Mozy offers a good product for a small price that does what it sets out to do. Sure, I'd like it to be faster, but that's the limitation of the current state of the internet. I'd definitely recommend it.
User # 3: The Heavy User
Technical Skill: High
Amount to back up: 150 GB
Operating System: Windows Vista
Product Used: Mozy Home Unlimited
Rating:
"We use mozy to backup all kinds of things ranging from videos to pictures to important personal and business documents."
I spent a couple of days researching remote backup programs before going with Mozy Home Edition. Price was definitely my main consideration, although I did reject one program because it could not backup external hard drives. (Mozy can handle external drives.) Reviews for Mozy Business were great, and I only saw one negative review for Mozy Home, so I went with it.
The price was great! With over 150 GB to back up, I needed something that did not charge by the GB. For my needs, $4.95 per month seems more than reasonable.
The program was easy to install and use on my Windows PC. I was up and running in minutes. For about 3 weeks, the program worked fine. It was slow to upload, but, at less than $4.95 a month, I did not mind being patient.
Then, I started receiving error messages and the uploading stopped.
Mozy Home does not include phone support - everything is done by email or chat. At one point, a Mozy rep remotely took over my computer, but he eventually had to escalate my issue to a Mozy engineer. The program started working again and seemed to be uploading faster than before.
Six weeks after this resolution, Mozy quit working again. After more back and forth with the support team, I reinstalled the program and it started working again. Since then, everything has been working like it should.
Overall, the program is cheap and the customer service team is responsive, but getting the service set up did not come without issues. Thankfully, Mozy's customer support was up to the task. I have been actively checking the status window every couple of days to make sure things are still working correctly, and it seems to be ok. In the end, I do have all of my data backed up remotely for a very reasonable price. If that's what you're looking for, Mozy Home Edition does the job.
Mozy is a great solution to backing up your computer, what about your email? If you have a Hotmail, Yahoo, or Gmail account, you can use BackupMyMail to easily and automatically backup your important email messages.
