Mozy On Up

I swear I received no payment to write this post. In the course of investigating some off-site backup solutions for work, I stumbled across an online service called Mozy. What it does is allow you to schedule automatic system backups that are stored off site. It supports a free version, which limits you to 2gb worth of backups or, for only $5/month, you can get unlimited backup space. I opted for the latter.

The process is fairly simple. After signing up for an account you download a small client that runs in the background on your computer. It allows you to specify your backup categories, e.g. videos, music, pictures, documents, etc., or you can just backup everything. The client works by securely uploading all data you've flagged to a remote server, where it is stored and protected with 448-bit encryption. The backups are differential - meaning the first one takes a bit of time (about 5days in my case), but after that it only backs up files that have changed within the datasets you have specified.

It's pretty good peace of mind for less than $60/year. I know that with all the photos and videos we've taken since Zoe was born, I'd be devastated if my drive crashed. I've tried to be good about backing up to DVDs, but I just can't do it on a consistent basis. I've also looked at NAS solutions, but anything worth its salt costs a fortune, so this was an ideal solution for me. Anyway, definitely worth checking out if you find yourself in the same boat...