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July 30, 2006

Mozy - Free Remote Backup Tool


Mozy is a remote backup tool for Windows that gives you 2GB space to automatically synchronize your folders online. Mozy encrypts data with 448-bit Blowfish encryption, and transfers them using 128-bit SSL, so it's secure. You can schedule daily or weekly backups or you can let the automatic backup happen (Mozy backups your folders only if the computer is idle for a certain number of minutes, by default - 30 minutes).

If you don't have NTFS as a file system, Mozy can't perform backup for opened files, so you might consider closing all the applications while Mozy backups the files.

My only complaint is about restoring files: you can select the files you want to restore online, but the interface is pretty stiff. You're limited to 5 restores a month and you get the restored files by email. It would be nice if you could manage restoring files using the same local client.

22 comments:

  1. I tried this software, and did a test backup. after that all my personal settings have been screwed up. IE/FF and settings for other programs got wiped. BEWARE!

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  2. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but the program doesn't overwrite your files. It just copies them to their servers. I've checked the date stamp and it's untouched. Do you assert that Mozy erased Registry keys or files from Application Data folder? I wouldn't see the point for that.

    And what did you backup (a custom folder, IE bookmarks)?

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  3. Do you have a link for "Mozy", let me know?

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  4. Alex hi,
    I tried searching for mozy within google labs with no success, do you have a URL?
    Oz'

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  5. Mozy is not created by Google. The first word of the post is linked. It's the only URL from the post. And it's as obvious as http://mozy.com.

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  6. i heard that there's something seriously wrong with mozy's privacy agreement and whatever you backup to their servers is ripe for marketing... i mean.. there's no such thing as a free ride..i get my online backup from data deposit box.. it's like a cent an mb up to the 1st gig.. then 3 bucks a gig

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  7. Take a look at IDrive-E (http://www.idrive.com). It performs totally hands-free automated backups of data. You can backup 2GB of data absolutely free with no limits on backups or restores and upload or download sizes.

    You can backup any type of file, including open files, with IDrive-E. The backups are incremental that transfer only portions of file that have been modified or changed since the last backup. Besides, simple sign up and installation, the user-friendly application interface can be used even by novice users. IDrive-E efficiently uses your Internet bandwidth by compressing the data files during transmission.

    Easily restore files and folders from your IDrive-E account to the local computer with a simple drag-and-drop operation. The application has two interfaces for the users to do backup and restore related operations. IDrive-E Classic interface offers a very simple and intuitive user-friendly interface to backup and restore files and folders, schedule backups for a future data and time, exclude files and folders and delete files and folders.

    IDrive-E Explorer view, virtual drive with Windows Explorer-like view, is meant for restoring files and folders and is not for backups. With this interface, you can browse your IDrive-E account, restore files and folders with a simple drag-and-drop or copy-and-paste operation, view history of files, drag-and-drop or copy files to local drive and search for files and folders backed up in your IDrive-E account. You can search data based on various criteria and restore files easily from the search results displayed.

    IDrive-E has strong encryption as it encrypts data twice before it is sent from the user's computer. The data is first encrypted with a private encryption key stored on the user's computer. Then 128-bit SSL (the same protocol your web browser uses for secure web transactions) is used to transmit all data to and from our servers.

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  8. After using Mozy for about 6 months I am very satisfied with the system.

    2 GB are for free, and this is sufficient to backup all my important files.

    https://mozy.com/?code=94HW8M

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  9. Backing up your system is great but what about backing up system state for AD, SQL , Exchange. DO you know if any of these can do that for 1 price.

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  10. I use it and I apsolutelly love it. Fantastic software. Once it is set, which is really easy for anyone to do, it runs automated in background. James said something about IDrive-E. I have not use it, but the description of IDrive-E is as he is describing Mozy. Once again, I really love Mozy. 2 Gig of free space, unlimited number and size of files, unlimited number of restores, and it does incremental backups, so you don't bacup over and over same, unchanged files. I may use IDrive-E to compare with Mozy. Hehe, I may keep both for extra space. :-)

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  11. Just checked the IDrive-E and compared to Mozy... As far as feature is concerned, it is a mirror image. I will stick with Mozy. The interface looks a bit cleaner than IDrive-E.

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  12. I am a huge fan of Mozy - saves me time backing up my computer, and it runs overnight for me! It took maybe five minutes to download and get started. ALL FREE!

    You can get an EXTRA FREE 1/4G of storage space by signing up here: https://mozy.com/?ref=8T92Q2. Go ahead - FREE!

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  13. Another beta version back up softwere is Memopal www.memopal.com 250GB space storage, access from everywhere, unlimited pc access, sharing files. To try.

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  14. Big warn with mozy if you are a paid user like me and have a lot to restore: 60 GB for me.
    Mozy is the best tool to backup but the worse to restore.
    There is no client to restore. In a web interface, you chouse the files or folder you want to restore and after you get a link to download it.
    But, imagine to download a single zip file of 50GB ! And more, their connection is very slow. You can wait 2 weeks, and be sure to have a corrupted file or a network interruption.

    Backup software is useless is you can not resore. Idrive has a client to restore then next year after my to years period with mozy I will switch to idrive.

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  15. idrive is not a mirror image of mozy. Mozy is slower and uses up considerable resource and slows down coexistant software. Also, mozy requires complete reload after a restore if you want to stay on the free pack because of the 2 gig limit. If you think mozy is usable you have not tried anything else. The below list are all ahead of mozy on features, usability, retention period and support.

    ibackup.com
    backup.com
    clunkclick.net
    www.backup.com
    www.backupanytime.com
    perfectbackup.co.uk
    www.carbonite.com

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  16. Ars seems to think that Mozy is the best: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/other/online-backup-solutions-a-review.ars/1

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  17. I've used Mozy for the past year, having switched from Carbonite. I've got 65GB with them so far (mostly photos) and Mozy's worked fine for me. And their Unlimited plan is great for people like me, whereas it would cost me twice as much to use JungleDisk. And I could possibly exceed iDrive's 150GB limit for a personal account in a couple years.

    My only wish is that it would throttle the backup when it detects that I'm using my computer. Carbonite did that and it worked pretty well. With Mozy I have to do it manually.

    Hopefully the restore after complete failure isn't as bad as the guy above said.

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  18. There are two ways to restore a backup. One is via the zipfile. The other is via the explorer integration plugin.. I'd like to hear more experiences in restoring a backup.

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  19. I've got a 2GB thumb drive. I don't see the point of such a limited backup tool.

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  20. What if you loose your thumb drive, or it gets stolen?

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  21. Personnaly I think Idrive is the best. But it has a one HUGE problem. Imagine that you are backing up your documents. After some time you are deleting useless files from documents, adds or modify new one. Let's imagine that after a year you want to restore all your documents after system crash. And what we got ..... YES - we are restoring all documents folder INCLUDING all deleted files past last year - BRILIANT !!!

    I've already wrote to I-Drive support to force them to make a function to restore files EXCLUDING deleted ones till the particular date/time. But they don't get a point. This makes I-Drive the best and most useless software at the same time. Didn't you guys notice this a little bit confusing weekness?

    Because I-Drive is the best, and has one weekness only, we should all SPAM I-drive support mailbox to convict them this. It's pretty simple, they should just make a checkbox in restore window called "Don't restore deleted files till particular date/time". From technical side it just requires to mark file deleted locally on I-Drive server with date/time when it was deleted. This should be made at each backup session.

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