Free Online Backup for home users by Mozy

A friend of mine always preached about the importance of taking backups. He regularly used to take backups of his data on an external hard disk, only to find out that one day it too crashed! Since then, he has been burning CDs every weekend to accomplish the back up tasks. Oh well… someone as lazy as I am would never have done that.

I tried to browse through to search for any cheap and reliable online solution that could help solve the problem. To my delight, I came across this cool service by Mozy. I read about the user reviews and pretty much liked it. Here is brief note on what this service is all about and how it can help you sleep peacefully.

About Mozy

With more than 750,000 users and 20,000 business customers, Mozy is one of the leaders in online data backup for consumers and businesses. It offers a simple, automatic and secure service for backing up your photos, music, outlook files and other important data safely backed up at a secured, remote location over the Internet. For home users, the service provides a free 2GB back up space.

Features

• Simple to set up
• Supports open/locked files
• Schedules automatic backups
• Performs backups automatically in the background, thus not effecting your work
• Supports version control for your data
• Encrypts all your data before transferring them to storage
• Supports backs up of your Outlook files, thus protecting even your emails
• Only backs up files that have been added or changed in subsequent backups, making the entire process take very less time
• Restoring the backup files is easy. Though home users are limited to only one restore in the queue at a time.

Security

The most important feature for any online backup provider has to be its security. Mozy wins it here too. Mozi uses 128-bit SSL encryption for your data during the transmission and for storage at their servers. This means the moment any data leaves your computer, it will be encrypted by Mozy so that sniffers can not read your data. The data is then stored at Mozy using 448-bit Blowfish encryption. Which means, even if it is hacked it will not be readable. So it’s well protected when it’s stored as well as, when the data is being transferred from your computer.

How does it work?

1. Sign up for MozyHome free account. Click here
2. Download and install the software
3. Follow the step-by-step instructions guide for the installation process
4. Select the types of files or selected folders you want to back up

Support

For home users, Mozy currently supports Windows 2000, XP (32 and 64 bit), and Vista (32 and 64 bit), as well as Mac OS X 10.4 and higher.

For Windows Server 2000, 2003, 2008, Windows Home Server, and Mac OS Server 10.4 and higher, business users need to upgrade to the paid MozyPro version.

Other online backup services

• Backblaze
• Carbonite
• Elephant Drive
• IBackup
• IDrive
• Box.net
• HP Upline

I think Mozy is great for lazy people like me and also for friends who keep preaching about backups!

What are you doing for your backups? Burning DVDs or CDs? Or taking backups on an external hard disk? In case you are already using Mozy or any of the other online backup service, do share your experience.

Links: MozyHome, Registration for Free MozyHome