Mozy Home Review: A Closer Look At Mozy Online Backup

Mozy Home backup is one of two levels of service Mozy provides. Mozy Home, as the name indicates, is geared for the home consumer and small office/home office consumers. Their other service, Mozy Pro, is for enterprise business users. And not too complicate things any further, there is Mozy Home Free and Mozy Home Unlimited.

Mozy Home Free allows users to backup 2GB of data for free. If you need to store more data than that, then you’ll need to sign up for Mozy Home Unlimited which allows you to backup an unlimited amount of data. The price for this service is $4.95/month but you get price breaks if you sign up for a one-year or two-year subscription. You can also get a 15% discount if you use the coupon code provided below.

Mozy Home offers bullet-proof encryption to ensure your files are fully secured and protected and is very easy to use. The small program that manages your backups works quietly in the background without taking up too much of your computer’s resources. And if you don’t want it continuously working in the background, you can create a schedule as to when you want your backups performed.

I prefer Mozy. -Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal

The best backup services we know come from Mozy...My laptop recently died, thousands of miles from home. Luckily I had a second machine with me and had backed up important data using free Mozy Home" -Gerry Blackwell, Small Business Computing

I recommend Mozy for users with large music and photo collections." -Dave Greenbaum, MacNN

I've used Mozy for a couple of years with little trouble. If you want to give it a free spin, sign up for Mozy Home Free, which gives you 2GB of backup space at no cost. -Cliff Miyake, Honolulu Star-Bulletin

I love Mozy. I have it running on two PC's error free. It did take a long time to do the initial backup, but then it just looked for changes. -Matt, Mozy Customer

Sure, my initial backup took about a month, but once that seed finished, the backups were quick and painless. I’ve been happy with Mozy so far. -Ben, Mozy Customer

I used Mozy for about 10 days. I started with some experiments using Mozy Home free and within days upgraded to the fee-based unlimited version. The verdict? It just works. -Julian, Mozy Customer

My Review of the Mozy Home Online Backup Service

Best For:
Home users and home office

Pros:
-Easy to use and setup
-Supports PC and Mac
-Works flawlessly in the background without bogging down your computer
-Never have to think about backing up files thanks to automatic backup
-Remote access to backed up files
-Cheap "insurance"; less than $5/month

Cons:
-No telephone support and support in general can be spotty
-Restoring a large number of files isn't always "easy"
-Advanced features can be overwhelming

Mozy is owned by Decho corporation, a subsidiary of the enterprise storage giant, EMC. The parent company's strong emphasis and experience with the enterprise space is apparent with Mozy Home. While the online backup service is easy to use, it's still not the easiest solution out there for the novice and it has some advanced features that may be overwhelming for some.

Mozy Home Free service was the first online backup service I tried back in the beginning of 2008. My experiences with the service may not reflect what the service offers today so please keep that in mind. Like everything with technology, things change rapidly.

Initial Install and Backup Using Mozy Home

Installing Mozy Home was easy and the setup was painless too. The primary problem I had was that my computer seemed to work slower when Mozy was working in the "background." I adjusted my backup schedule but the fact that it seemed to bog down my system at all bothered me. I didn't think such a small program could have an affect on my computer but it did. Granted, it could have been because it was my initial backup but still it bothered me.

The other thing that started to bug me was that upon further research I discovered that the best way to restore a large number of files was using their web restore feature. Eventually, I was going to have at least 30GB of data to backup so this was a concern. When you use Mozy Home, you have two (actually three) options to restore your data. You can do a client restore, web restore, or a DVD restore.

File Restoration Options with Mozy Home

The client restore is when you use the application that runs on your computer to do a restore. This is the easiest method but unfortunately it's not the best choice when trying to restore a large amount of data. This is according to Mozy and from what I've gathered reading reviews of Mozy Home from other users.

The web restore option is the most common method used (and the one Mozy recommends) when restoring a large number of files. With this method you login to your Mozy Home account to make a restore request. Mozy then sends you an email that your restored files are ready to be downloaded. You then have 7 days, I believe, to download the files or you have to go through the restore request again. The files you download are zip files and can be very large so downloading them can take a little time. This part didn't bother me as I'm familiar with zip files so no big deal. However, if you're a novice at this stuff and don't know anything about zip files, then the process can be intimidating.

What bothered me was that I read a couple negative comments online from users of Mozy Home who had a difficult time sorting through the restored files after unzipping them. Apparently, the files aren't neatly organized like they are on your desktop so you can't just "drag and drop" them. I don't know if these folks did something wrong or just weren't familiar with the process, or if it truly was a mess to work with the restored files.

Either way, given the temporary computer performance issue I experienced and the potential restore issue, I had no interest upgrading my Mozy Home free account to the unlimited version. I looked for other options. By the way, the third option to restore your data is by having Mozy put all your backed up files on DVD and then have the DVD's shipped to you. It's not cheap though as it will cost you around $60.

As I was putting this Mozy Home review together I searched for comments from real Mozy customers. Some of the comments I found are highlighted above. The few negative comments I found were inline with my previous experiences and research. Some userss indicated performance issues not only with their computers but with the backup application itself. Some also mentioned that the restore process wasn't as easy as the backup process.

Botton Line of this Mozy Home Review

What I've discovered with these online backup services who cater to the home user is that none of them are perfect, but what do you expect for unlimited storage for less than $5/month? You're not going to get a perfect, flawless solution.

For every few positive reviews I read about Mozy Home, I would find a less-than-positive review. I didn't get the sense one way or another after reading all these reviews (from both experts and consumers alike) to use Mozy Home or not to use it. Some loved it. Some hated it. And like I said, I didn't have a bad experience with it. It was my paranoid tendencies about computer performance and the potential restore issue (again based on only two reviews I read) that had me looking for other options.

Based on my actual experience with Mozy Home and the overall comments and reviews I read, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it with a few caveats. One, none of these "cheap" online services are perfect so set your expectations accordingly. Two, try to test the restore process to see just how easy (or difficult) it is to get your data restored. And finally, don't rely on any online backup service as your sole backup safeguard!

Backup your data to an external hard drive at least once a month. By doing that you'll be totally protected and you'll have the best of both worlds. You'll have instant access to any files via your external hard drive and if your hard drive crashes or perishes in a fire or some other catastrophe, you'll have your files waiting for you at Mozy Home (even if it might be hard to retrieve them).

Month-to-Month Plan: $4.95/month ($59.40 for the year if you pay month-to-month)
1 Year Subscription: $54.45
2 Year Subscription: $103.95

Mozy was founded in 2005 and was acquired by EMC Corporation in 2007. EMC is a leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions for organizations. Mozy is now part of the Decho Corporation, a subsidiary of EMC Corporation. Decho Corporation is located in Seattle, WA and Mozy's headquarters are in Pleasant Grove, UT. The current CEO of Decho is Harel Kodesh.

As of October 2008, Mozy had more than 900,000 customers, 25,000 business customers, and 11 petabytes of information stored at its multiple data centers around the globe.