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Mozy kills unlimited backup, time to take matters into your own hands
CNET's Stephen Shankland says that the 600GB of data he has backed up with Mozy will now cost him around $60 per month to store. That's a huge chunk of change over the course of a year -- especially when you can pick up 1TB hard drives for around $75. I only signed up for Mozy last month, but I'm going to bring home a USB SATA hard drive dock like the Thermaltake BlacX and a pair of 1TB drives and let Windows 7's built-in backup tool take care of my data from now on.
Comments
18
Subscribe to commentsDAJFeb 1st 2011 7:23AM
I've never seen the point of Cloud backups for personal use. I get the concept, and it is great, but for home users your upload speed is significantly less that your download so it takes SO long to upload data to these services.
swb371Feb 1st 2011 7:28AM
I do that exact same thing for backup, except I use truecrypt to encrypt the disk - that way if it gets lost/stolen after I take it offsite I don't have to worry about the data on the disk.
Shimbo The MightyFeb 1st 2011 7:37AM
What about Carbonite?
AaronFeb 1st 2011 7:50AM
Crashplan is a good alternative btw.. we have the house/unlimited plan for like $60/yr. To answer the question of "why use it?" yeah, my system takes nearly 30 days to get fully protected, but the nice thing is just knowing that I have an off-site backup. I've restored my system about 3 times since signing up for their service (takes me about 5 days to fully restore my data, but you can specify that you want certain files restored first)...
Drew GreenFeb 1st 2011 8:36AM
@Aaron I think I'll be going with CrashPlan next year when my two-year Mozy subscription expires. I have about 50GB of data on their servers right now. That will likely continue to grow at a decent pace. Thanks for the tip!
MikeFeb 1st 2011 8:32AM
I'm not usually one to comment with "choose A instead of B" type of stuff but in this instance I can't recommend CrashPlan enough and I've tried them all. Like Aaron said, it can take a while to upload/download all of your data but the peace of mind is worth it. I don't have to worry about theft or fire destroying my hard drives and I can feel safe knowing it's encrypted before leaving my computer. I've restored my data from with CP multiple times without any issues. If you don't trust their servers then at least you can use CP to back up to other computers.
RyanZFeb 1st 2011 8:41AM
JungleDisk with S3. I have like 35gbs on there, but I pay like $5 a month for it, nothing much has changed in my backup path lately, so not much actual transfer going on. I've been using it since it came out and it works great for me.
junyoFeb 1st 2011 9:39AM
Stuck a junk PC at my friend's house, running autorsync on Gbridge to an external. Get's my backup's offsite like a cloud service, but if something catastrophic happens, can have my backups in hours, rather than the days it would take to download a significant amount of data.
David AtkinsonFeb 1st 2011 10:37AM
Just canceled my Mozy account after taking a look at CrashPlan. Going to go with them instead.
chrisarozFeb 1st 2011 11:21AM
I'm quite surprised by Lee's last line in the article, and comments that have followed. It seems everyone's missing the point of cloud-based/off-site backup. The goal is to not necessarily replace a standard external drive (though for those with smaller amounts of data it can), but rather to add a better chance of data recovery. The extra redundancy and off-site protection are the key to proper data protection. Should there there be catastrophic failure at your location (fire, flood, theft), your data is still safe and recoverable from your online service.
While this has always been the ideal backup solution (on-site AND off-site combined), it wasn't until services like Mozy and Carbonite came along that regular consumers truly had the ability to take advantage of it. Moving to a single on-site external drive may be easier and cheaper (in the short-term), it could prove tragic in the long-term. If money is a major issue, perhaps you should select your most critical data and use the FREEE 2GB Mozy provides to AT LEAST save that remotely.
JadeFeb 1st 2011 3:17PM
@chrisaroz What I do is have a 1TB drive, which I backup to and keep at work. So a "catastrophic failure at my location" the data will still be safe - the chances of a fire at my home and work on the same day is incredibly small.
CLFeb 1st 2011 9:39PM
@chrisaroz Exactly. Every night I backup everything to a local backup drive, but once a weekIy upload critical data (finance info, photos) to Amazon S3 via Jungle Disk. The local drive allows for a quick recovery of everything from a single file to a disk restore, while the cloud backup is my disaster recovery for theft, flood, etc.
I used to have my local backup on an external drive, but now I just have the extra drive inside my computer case. No need for it to be external now that I have critical data on the cloud.
Lee MathewsFeb 1st 2011 11:23AM
I keep my second hard drive at work and alternate days. Offsite + onsite win. I'm not missing the point, Chris.
Stephen J. GalbinceaFeb 1st 2011 11:55AM
Crashplan offering 15% off for Mozy users. $10.20 a month for 2-10 PC's and unlimited data. I switched from Mozy today and will cancel Mozy when I am done seeding Crashplan. http://b5.crashplan.com/consumer/store.vtl
Stephen J. GalbinceaFeb 1st 2011 12:02PM
@Stephen J. Galbincea ^^^ Meant to add that it's $10.20 for month to month like I do. It goes down to $5 a month if you pre-pay 4 years.
MaxFeb 1st 2011 12:59PM
Arg.. I'll leave Mozy too.. Now, can't decide between CrachPlan, Carbonite and BackBlaze..
Carbonite has an iPhone app which I'd like... but just don't know which one os the best for about 100gb of data
ZaneFeb 1st 2011 2:38PM
I have been a Mozy customer for years now. Quite a disapointment to read. I have my account paid thru 4/2012. I guess at that point I will move to crashplan which apparently has an unlimited plan.
http://b4.crashplan.com/consumer/store.vtl#family-plan
Todd G.Feb 8th 2011 4:09PM
There has been a lot of buzz the past few days about where the online backup industry is headed and whether unlimited backup is a sustainable business model. Carbonite will continue to provide consumers with unlimited backup for a flat fee because of the simplicity it provides.
http://www.carbonite.com/en/online-backup-software/flat-fee