Mozy Review

• Features
• |
• Likes
• |
• Dislikes
• |
• User Reviews
• |
• Where to Buy

Editor’s Rating:

Avg. User Rating:

Overall
Ease of Use
Features
Value for Money
Customer Service	No Ratings

Mozy Features/Benefits

Mozy is owned by EMC Corporation, which is a world leader in information storage and data protection software, which means your data is definitely safe and secure with Mozy. Mozy is a great choice for the Home user, with a 2GB Free Plan that you can try for an unlimited time before committing to the paid version.

Likes

Local as well as Online Backup: With Mozy you can now backup your data both locally and online, all in one application for one great price. With Mozy’s new 2xProtect, you can now select a local drive and Mozy will create a "MozyLocalBackup" directory to hold your backup in, as well as backup your data to mozy’s servers. You no longer need separate applications to backup your data locally and online.

NEW – Mozy Stash File Sync: New Mozy Stash allows you to sync files across any or all computers, tablets and mobile devices you link to your “stash” folder. Mozy Online Backup and Mozy Stash are complementary, but work indepedently as well. Online Backup, backs up your files at a scheduled time and makes them available to you via Mozy mobile apps and the Mozy website, however Online backup will never update other computers. Unlike Online Backup, Stash sends your updates to your Mozy account as they happen rather than on a set schedule. Now, even if you are away from your computer you can access your "stash" from any web browser.

FREE Account for unlimited time: Mozy offers a free 2GB account to home users, that you can can use for an unlimited amount of time. You can also use this to test out the waters at Mozy before committing to one of the paid Mozy Home plans. This way you can be sure that Mozy is a good feel and fit for you before putting money on the table.

Bandwidth Throttle: You can limit the amount of internet band-width that Mozy is allowed to utilize during certain hours. This is highly beneficial if you are operating a business on the computer that you are also trying to backup. You can tell Mozy that it’s only allowed to use a amount of the bandwidth so that you are still able to work during those hours.
Or you can enable bandwidth throttling all the time.

Scheduled or Idle Time Backups: You have the option to either have your backups performed when your computer is idle after a certain amount of time, or you can schedule your backups to be performed daily, weekly, monthly.

Ease of Use: Mozy is easy to set up, and ease to use for any home user. Mozy automatically scans your computer and selects the files and folders it thinks should be backed up and presents you with a summary screen showing what it will backup. Caution just needs to be taken to verify that what you "think" you are backing up, is what you are actually backing up. It is not the fault of the software or the backup company if you are not actually backing up what you thought you were. In the end it is the user’s responsibility to verify that they are backing up what they want and need. Mozy makes it easy to view and verify the files/folders you are backing up, so there should not be surprises on anyone’s part.

Dislikes

No Drag & Drop: This may be more nick picky than anything, but with today’s GUI capabilities, this is a definite drawback in our opinion.. It’s not just a convenience anymore, but almost a necessity for applications to be able to support drag and drop capabilities for ease of use – especially when you are talking about something as mission critical as a backup.

Slow Performance: Mozy’s initial backup was slower than it’s competitors, however it should be noted that proper expectations need to be set here for all the vendors we have reviewed. Any initial backup is going to take a prolonged period of time to complete, as it will have to perform a one-time complete backup of a potentially large amount of data, over an internet connection – where speeds can fluctuate considerably. So you need to be realistic on what you are expecting. Once this initial backup is complete, then only changes are backed up and those will go quickly and effectively. If you have a very large set of data to be backed up initially, you may want to contact the vendor about an alternative method of accomplishing this initial task. Most vendors will be willing to work with you on this.We did notice however, that locating and restoring large files could also take a considerable amount of time, and probably why Mozy really pushes their overnight DVD service – which however results in a fee. Update: With version 2.0 backups seem to be quite a bit zippier than what we experienced with previous versions of Mozy. This is indeed a welcome improvement.

Files only Kept for Limited Time: On the Mozy Home Free account files are only kept for 30 days, and for the monthly Home account it’s 60 days. If you do not backup regularly, and your account goes inactive you will lose your backup data, so make sure you are backing up within these windows in order to insure your efforts are not wasted!

  Where to Buy

• Try 2GB Mozy Free and Get 10% Off

  Summary

We find that Mozy is a great, simple online backup source for home users offering a 2GB Free version, and two different paid versions that will meet most home user needs. It’s easy to set up with an automatic selection process that works for most home users, but selected files/folders can be reviewed and easily modified to meet specific needs. Now with 2.0 you also get 2xProtect offering a local backup option for no additional cost, making you doubly safe.