Mozy Remote Backup: Simple and Secure Online Storage ... for Free! The Not So Painless Restoration Process Joseph Moran
Customization Options
Mozy gives you a number of ways to customize your backups. For starters, you can tell Mozy to back up your data daily or weekly according to a schedule you define. You can also perform backups on an automatic and ongoing basis subject to specified parameters such as how long your computer has been idle or how busy your CPU is. A history log lets you view the details of past backups, and you can enable a notification message in the event that a backup hasn't been performed for a certain number of days.
Mozy also offers a bandwidth throttling option, which is turned off by default. If you activate it, you can limit the amount of bandwidth Mozy will use (in eight increments from 32 kb/sec up to 1 Mb/sec). You can also specify a time window during which Mozy is to throttle bandwidth, so you can limit its impact during the day and still give it full access to your connection at night. This feature is particularly useful if you use any other applications that are particularly dependent on upstream bandwidth, such as VoIP or videoconferencing.
Restoring Your Files
The process for restoring files isn't quite as straightforward as backing them up. You can't retrieve your files directly through the client software, but instead you must log into your account at www.mozy.com (a button on the client will also take you to the site). From there, you can browse through your backups and select files or folders you want to restore. Mozy then "prepares" the restored files and sends you e-mail (we got ours within just a few minutes) with a link you can use to download the files.
The downloads are provided as ZIP files, and when you decompress them the contents are automatically put back in their original locations, so if you're restoring to a different folder structure or system, it's best to copy the files back manually. Mozy decrypts the restored files before ZIP-ing them, which means that they're stored unencrypted on the server while they're waiting to be downloaded. (As with backups, the link itself is SSL encrypted.)
If you opted to use your own encryption key in lieu of Mozy's, then the files within the ZIP are still encrypted when you download them. This does add another step to the restore process since you then must input your key into a separate Mozy-provided utility in order to decrypt your files (and as an important warning, if you forget your key, you're up the proverbial creek.)
Mozy Remote Backup is intended for backup only, and thus limits the number of restores you can perform per calendar month. (The company says it does this in part to discourage use of the service for illegal file sharing.) When we performed our first restore we were informed that we could do four more for the month.
Mozy Remote Backup's main attractions are the relatively low fees and generous storage amounts it offers. If you prepay annually for a service plan, the company will give you a month free, and it will bump up a free account's storage limit by 1GB for every four users you refer to the service. We also like that the 2GB plan is both cost- and ad-free. We do wish the restore process were a bit simpler, but we're guessing most users likely won't need to restore data very often.
Pros: Generous storage available in free version and low monthly prices for additional storage (if needed); many customization options
Cons: Somewhat cumbersome multi-step restore process; only supports Windows XP at this time; service can't be used for file-sharing
