Mozy Your Mac
Posted by Fraser Drew on 05/13/07 in Home & Personal, Organization
Ever lost a document? Of course you have. Annoying, isn’t it? Well, the new online backup app Mozy can help.
Mozy has been stuck ‘inside dull grey boxes’ for years, but now, it has been ported to the Mac, and is available here as a brand new(ish) Beta.
So what is Mozy, I hear you ask. Well it’s an extremely simple backup app, that lets you backup whatever you want to the Mozy servers. Best of all, you get 2GB of storage free!
Mozy is very simpe app, as shown in the screen shot, allowing you to either back up a specific folder (as shown), or sets of data; such as your Address Book and mail. This is a very useful feature, as it allows you to select only the important things that will fit into your 2GB of free space.

Of course, if you like Mozy, you can upgrade to an unlimited account, which gives you unlimited storage for just $4.95 a month, which most would agree is extremely reasonable.
Another great feature of Mozy is the automation. You can select a time for it to update the backup, and you can specify if you want it to backup when the computer is idle.
There is also a time-machine-esque feature, as it keeps multiple copies (versions) of the files that are backed up. I’m sure this will be a lifesaver if you happen to delete a document by accident, or if that crucial Pages document with an essay for tomorrow gets corrupted overnight.
Security worries? 448-bit encryption on your files, and 128 bit SSL on the connection.
Recovery of those oh-so-precious data dumps is also a very simple process. Just log-in to the Mozy website, and you have the option to either download all the files, or a specific folder in a nice, handy DMG. Or if you have money to burn, you can even get Mozy to send you DVD(s) with your files for $65+ 50 cents per GB of data. Ouch.
So are there any cons? Well yes, it can use up a lot of bandwidth, and bandwidth throttling doesn’t yet seem to be included in the OS X Beta, but this may come with time. If your bandwidth is on the light side Mozy might not be the best solution for you, and you might want to try something more localized, like ax external hard drive or DVD backups.
All in all, Mozy is a very simple, easy to use, personal offsite backup solution. I can see from the chatter online that it is being adopted at a reasonable clip, and I haven’t heard of any data disaster stories. If you haven’t already I recommend you grab yourself a copy over at Mozy and give the free sampling a taste test today.
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