Mozy Remote Backup: Simple and Secure Online Storage ... for Free! Simple and Secure Online Storage on the Cheap Joseph Moran
You've undoubtedly heard about the importance of backing up your data thousands of times already, so we know we don't need to tell you again. But once you finally do decide to start backing up, it can sometimes be intimidating choosing from among the myriad methods and applications available for the task.
One increasingly popular option is to back up your data to an Internet server across your broadband connection, a method employed by Mozy Remote Backup from Berkeley Data Systems (incidentally, this isn't the same Berkeley Systems that once brought us flying toasters in the popular After Dark screen saver).
Mozy Remote Backup offers several levels of service and attractive pricing. For starters, there's a free version that limits you to 2 GB of backup storage but is untainted by any subsidized advertising or marketing distractions. If that's not enough, you can bump up to 5, 30, or 60 GB for $1.95, $4.95, or $9.95 a month, respectively. Mozy Remote Backup does utilize a downloadable client utility, which at the moment is only available for Windows XP (though a Mac version is also planned).
Whether you choose Mozy's free or paid version, you get 448-bit Blowfish encryption to secure your data. When you first install the Mozy software, you must decide whether you want to use Mozy's built-in encryption key or generate your own. (You can also import an existing key if you have one.) Using Mozy's default key is certainly the most convenient option, but it may not be a choice many users are comfortable with since it means that the company could theoretically decipher your stored data. (The posted privacy policy outlines the circumstances under which this could happen.)
Backing Up
The Mozy software took the liberty of recommending certain backup sets organized by category. It did a good job of identifying the kinds of data one might typically overlook (things like IE and Firefox favorites, or files stored outside of My Documents, for example). You can modify Mozy's choices using a rules-based interface to include or exclude certain file types, folders, etc.
Mozy will only let you access local drives, so you can't use it to back up data on say, a NAS drive. But then again, if you do have access to networked storage, you're probably not a candidate for online backup in the first place. You can use the software to back up data on multiple systems, but the storage quota remains the same for your online account.
When you define your initial backup (or add new files or folders to an existing one) Mozy reports how much of the storage allotment will be used and about how long it will take — in our case it amounted to 1.1 GB and 24 hours. Mozy doesn't actually measure your connection speed but instead bases its estimate on a "typical" broadband connection.
If 24 hours to do a backup seems like a long time, keep in mind that the inherent weakness of any online storage service is that it's bottlenecked by the speed of your upstream link. Even users with relatively fast 6 Mb/sec cable modem connections will likely be limited to a relatively 384 Kb/sec (at best) when transferring data upstream.
The saving grace is that since subsequent backups are differential and as a result only include new or changed files, they complete much more quickly. The time it took to complete our first backup was pretty much in line with the initial estimate, while subsequent backups took considerably less time. Mozy can also back up open files (i.e. that Outlook .pst) as long as your hard drive is formatted with NTFS.
Before any of your data is sent out over the Internet, the Mozy client encrypts it using the key you specified at installation. For added security, the actual data transfer is also encrypted via SSL. We didn't encounter excessive CPU utilization or any system slowdown during the encryption or transfer process.
