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Online Backup Solution - Mozy Fits the Bill

For some time now I've been looking for a good off-site backup service. About 2 weeks ago, after reading a blog post from Scott Hanselman, I was alerted to a very cool service called Mozy Online Backup.

There are 2 plans - a free one with a 2GB limit, and a paid plan for $4.95/month which gets you unlimited storage. I signed up for the paid plan since I have at least 30GB of data to backup.

Here's how it works. You sign up and download the software and install it. It runs as a service and walks you through a configuration wizard to select the file types to back-up. You can also choose items directly from the file system to include in the backup plan. The first back-up plan took several days for me, but once complete, it just uploads changed data. Very nice.

I did have a couple of problems with my Virtual PC images. Since I use them all of the time, it seemed to confuse Mozy a bit so that it never did actually complete a full backup of my system. When I de-selected them from my backup plan, things worked as advertised. I'll need to investigate the VPC stuff at some point and re-add them.

That said, it's a comforting feeling knowing I have my files backed up to an off-site location. I'm part of a small company spread-out across the country, so all of my source code is with me. Of course I have an external drive back-up plan in place that backs up my files nightly, but that wouldn't really help if something like a fire happened at my office building.

I'm really looking forward to the release of Windows Home Server which sounds like an amazing way to keep all of your data backed up. I think that in conjunction with Mozy will be a sweet solution.

As for performance, so far I haven't felt any adverse affects with Mozy running. It backs-off when your computer is in use and takes advantage of idle time. Again, very nice.

So, if you're looking for a good online backup service, Mozy is one to check out. My experience so far has been very good.

Tags Online Storage Online Backups

posted by John Walker @ 4/14/2007 1:52:00 AM

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Online Backup Solution - Mozy Fits the Bill

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