Hi all. I wouldn’t ordinarily use this blog to endorse non-music related products, but I have to give a shout-out to a service I’ve been using for nearly a year with very positive results. Like many music aficionados, much of my collection is stored on the hard drive of my home computer. True, many of the mp3s to which I listen on my iPod come from CDs I’ve purchased, but in the event of a house fire or similar catastrophe, likely none of my media would survive, whether electronic or physical in nature. So, some time ago I began to investigate a back-up solution for my electronic media.
One common solution for electronic back-up needs is to purchase an external hard drive, whether networked or physically connected to the computer needing duplication. This does cover one variety of risk, that which comes from the likelihood that a computer crash will wipe out months or years of
accumulated files. However, an external drive does not address the “house fire” possibility, unless the drive is located off-site. And since I don’t have a secure location at which to store a back-up drive, nor the technical expertise necessary to create and maintain such a configuration, the easiest solution was to pay someone else to do it for me. Which brings us to the market for on-line back-up services.
I looked into many such services, most of which allow the subscriber to upload files to the service’s servers at some distant location for a nominal fee. Many services offer a limited amount of free storage - Google, for example, offers users on-line storage for documents, photos, and so on at no charge. But I didn’t want 2 gigs or 5 gigs or even 10 gigs of free storage. I wanted a service that would allow me to back-up my music library - currently almost 175 gigs in size - plus all my documents, applications, and settings. Ultimately, my search lead me to one solution: Mozy.
Mozy is an on-line back-up solution for home and business users. Subscribers download an application which runs in the background and uploads user-designated groups of files to Mozy’s servers at pre-determined intervals. The cost to me is $4.95 a month - one month free if you pay for a year in advance - and for that, I can back up my files at my discretion. Typically I do so once a week, or more often if I rip a bunch of mp3s to my computer. Back-ups can happen as often or infrequent as I like. If my computer gets fried or burned, I can order back-up DVDs or downloads of my stored files. Very cool. But what I enjoy most is the piece of mind. My music library, at least what I’ve ripped to my hard drive, is safe, as are my financial records, emails, bookmarks, and every other bit of emphemora saved to my hard drive. And for less than $5 a month. Can you beat that? Oh, and I did mention that I have unlimited storage space with Mozy? Hells yeah.
That’s not to say that Mozy is without flaws. The background application that initiates and monitors the back-up frequently has trouble communicating with Mozy’s servers and shuts down the back-up. As a result, back-ups often have to be initiated and re-initiated by the user - not quite the attention-free process I would like. Also, the upload speeds can be very slow - 45k/sec at the high end - although that might be my ISP at work.
Whatever flaws there are, I still greatly appreciate Mozy - for the low cost, generally positive user experience, and piece of mind it provides. And for that, they get my endorsement. Big ups.
[NOTE: There are of course many other on-line storage solutions, but since none of them offer anything like the features that Mozy does, I declined to mention them here. Also, Mozy does run on Macs and Windows machines, but I don't think they support Linux. There are other issues associated with running Mozy on a Mac - refer to this page for more information.]
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