Mozy Online Backup: Pros and Cons

[Jennie Ann]

I think one of the biggest fears in our industry is the computer crash, followed by the loss of stored data. This past Christmas, my daughter bought me a backup drive that holds 200 GB. It's more room than I'll ever need, for sure. She paid, I think, about a hundred bucks. I did not need one this big, but she said that they were out of the smaller ones, and so she elected to get me the Big Kahuna.

I saw an ad on TV for Mozy which says "simple, automatic, secure backup." Is it really secure? It's an online service which offers up to 2 GB free as an automatic backup. For a measly $4.95 per month, you can get unlimited room on the Mozy backup server, with no setup fees, no hardware to purchase, and little management required.

How secure is Mozy? Me personally, I have transcripts of high-profile interviews and confidential proceedings that I would never want to be read by eyes other than those who hired me.

Here's the website in case you have never heard of Mozy: Mozy website

All those in favor of Mozy, say "aye." All those opposed, say "nay." What say you, my fellow members of CSR Nation? Is this a good thing, or would it more safe, as well as economical, to just purchase your own external hard drive? I mean, just how secure is Mozy?

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

I use 2 external hard drives at all times, do an automatic backup (using Second Copy, http://www.secondcopy.com) every night to both hard drives because it is not if but when an external drive fails. This is the best backup because it's quick to back up and restore if you ever need it.

I also use Carbonite which costs $90 for two years with unlimited backup. The program works in the background. Right now with only 1 gig of memory, Carbonite sometimes slows down my machine so I "pause" it for a few hours. Tomorrow I'm getting an additional 3 gigs of memory installed so maybe then I won't be noticing the slight slowdown that Carbonite causes by dong its thing in the background.

Don't know about Mozy but Carbonite has a good rep and is cheaper so. . .

[Kyung]

I used the free trial period for Mozy. I prefer the Carbonite. I think they're perfectly good. But I think the Carbonite was cheaper. I've been on it since the beginning of the year and had no problems.

Oh, I also backup to a external hard drive.

[Elsa Jorgensen]

Aye. I've been using Mozy for two or three years, I think. Mozy and Carbonite are around $4.95 a month. Mozy gives a couple of extra months with a one-year or two-year plan. (Carbonite may offer that too.)

Whatever you back up with either service only stays on their server for 30 days after the file is deleted from your computer. To get around that, have an external hard drive and keep completed jobs there. Have Mozy back up both the computer and the external drive so nothing is ever lost.

[Jennie Ann]

Wow, that is GREAT info, Elsa. I had no idea that this is how it worked. Thanks for the tip!

Thanks to all who responded. I am considering going with Mozy or Carbonite now, even though I do have a backup drive.

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

One backup drive is not good enough. IT WILL FAIL. I have two external drives that I use every night and a third one that I got a good deal on waitiing in the wings for when one of them fails.

[Cindy L.A.]

I have been using Carbonite for two years on two different computers (never my realtime laptop because Carbonite can cause problems). I recently read a bunch of posts on -- I want to say it was PC World -- where people had a lot of trouble restoring from Carbonite. That's really troublesome to me and now I'm thinking of looking at Mozy. I love the ease of backing up with Carbonite, but I hadn't thought of the issue of restoring. People lost a lot of data and didn't like the help they got. I like having the offsite as an extra option, particularly since I live in an earthquake and fire area!
Cindy L.A.