Mozy 2.0 Online Backup Service Review

We’ve used online backup services for years, including Mozy, Backblaze, Carbonite, and Connected. Over those years, the evolution of the services has been slow and the features have not expanded greatly. With Mozy 2.0, EMC promises a much improved user experience. The biggest change to the software is a new feature called 2xProtect – a local backup copy can be retained on a local hard drive – a feature which surprisingly, other online backup service companies have not thought of in the past. This solves one of the biggest problems I’ve had in the past with Mozy – the slow backups.

First, let’s run through what’s changed in the software.

Online and Local Backups

First, and foremost, as we mentioned, Mozy now supports a local backup of your data while the files are being shipped off to some huge data center halfway across the country. This provides you some protection while your files are compressed, encrypted, and transferred. This requires a local drive be connected to your machine for backups, which often is not the case for us ultra-mobile laptop people.

Faster Backups

Mozy 2.0 claims to be 75% faster compressing and encrypting files while it is 25% faster transferring files. This was the primary reason we stopped using Mozy for our personal computers (I am still a business client for some servers): the initial backup never finished on my Mac. We have a lot of digital photos and in the months we had the service, the initial backup never finished so there were hundreds of gigabytes of photos unprotected. Despite leaving the computer on 24 hours a day on a fast Internet connection, the service was just too slow. I realize that we are an example of heavy users, but it got to the point of the ridiculousness and we moved to Backblaze – which backed everything up in a few weeks. Unfortunately, version 2.0 is Windows only for now, so this doesn’t solve our basic problem with the service.

New, Refreshed Interface

Mozy has a new, refreshed interface which is much cleaner than the previous versions. Unfortunately, it still does not provide information power users would like to know – such as which files are backed up and which are not. The software now allows some pausing and throttling (something other service providers have had for some time) which is very handy if you need to do something using your Internet connection or something processor intensive. You no longer must terminate the backup just to get your work accomplished.

Online Backup Service Pricing

Pricing has not changed for home users: it’s still $4.95 per month of $54.45 per year – a reasonable price and well within expectations for this market. If you’re looking for an online backup service, Mozy should be on your shortlist for consideration.

Related posts:

1. Why don’t you backup your computer?
2. Using a Hard Drive Recovery Service
3. Easeus Todo Backup Review
4. 5 Reasons to Not Store Data on a Flash Drive