Recently I wrote a post titled My Introduction to Online Backups where I discussed two of the more popular online backup services. The two I discussed were Carbonite and Mozy.
I decided to choose Mozy as my online backup service mainly because of its ability to backup data from an external hard drive. Since all of my data is on an external hard drive, this was a major point in my decision. In this post I will outline my experience with the service so far.
The Pricing
Most online backup systems charge a fee for each gigabyte (GB) of storage that you use. My storage requirement is close to 100GB and will grow substantially in the future, so paying per gigabyte was not an option. Mozy, on the other hand, charges a flat rate per month for unlimited storage space. You can pay for a yearly subscription at $54.45 or two years at $103.95. I purchased the two year plan.
So for the next two years, I will be able to backup all of my data without worries of keeping track of the amount of money I will need to spend.
The Backup Process
As with other backup systems, I had to download an application that will run in the background on my computer, and monitor my data. Once it notices changes to the data, it will then begin the backup process.
There are many options available in the application that you can configure. I kept the actual options on the default, but did change what the application will backup. By default, Mozy includes a list of backup sets that should cover most users’ data. For me, I just needed my photos and videos backed up from my external hard drive.
I deleted all the default backup sets, and created a new one for my photos. I then selected my photos directory on my external hard drive, and then initiated the backup. A total of 16.3GB of digital photos were then backed up to the Mozy servers. It took approximately 4 days to backup that much data.
Once the photos were completed, I then created another backup set for my videos. I had to be careful here, however, as my ISP has bandwidth limits so I only selected a few videos to backup first. The total space for the videos was roughly the same as the digital photos, so it should take approximately 4 days as well.
The one thing to note about the backup is the temporary files. You will need roughly 130% of the size of the backup free on the drive containing your temporary files. This is because Mozy creates temporary files for your data (my guess is that they are the security-encoded files) before they are uploaded. This is a gripe for many users, but I have managed to not have any problems with it. I have plenty of free space on my drive.
During the last week there has been some very active weather where I live. This has caused the power to go off several times during the backup process, stopping the backup. Once I restarted my desktop, the Mozy backup continued from where it left off. The only problem was with a large video file. It appears to have restarted that one over again. So if Mozy is in a middle of a large file backup and is interrupted, it will restart the backup of that file.
I have not yet tried to restore my files, but I’ll do once I get my data backed up and let you know how it went.
The Pros
There are several good points about the service, that I have found in my week of using the service.
- Unlimited storage space for a flat fee per month. Yearly and two year plans exist.
- The application doesn’t slow down the Internet connection, or hog the processor.
- Has the ability to backup data located on an external hard drive.
- Includes the ability to only use a percentage of your Internet bandwidth.
- Fast uploading. Uploaded at roughly 600Kb/s, and my maximum speed is 640Kb/s.
- Continued where it left off with the backup when the power went out.
- Can easily suspend the backup by right-clicking the icon and selecting suspend from the menu.
- Technical support responded to my questions within 24 hours.
The Cons
No backup service is perfect, so there are also a few issues with Mozy.
- Uses a lot of disk space on the drive with the temporary folder.
- If the backup is interrupted for a large data file, the backup will restart the backup of that file.
- If a file is deleted on your computer, it is removed from your online backup during the next backup.
- Must pay to backup additional computers. If you upgrade your computer, you can contact Mozy support and they can transfer your account to your new computer.
Summary
I decided to purchase the two year plan with Mozy to manage my online backups. So far I haven’t had any issues with the service, and have been pleased with the speed of my backups. This sevice is one of the last pieces of my backup solution, and will allow me to restore my files without retrieving my actual archived DVDs.