Backup your PC’s hard drive
A friend of mine called me a couple of days ago to tell me about this great hard drive backup service called “Mozy Online Backup for Home”. Until this time, I have never heard about this service. My friend Joe explained that this program backs up all of his files and stores them at an off site location. He found this service a few weeks ago when his computer crashed and he lost a lot of important information and work. Joe was so enthusiastic about this service from Mozy that I had to see it for myself.
I don’t always practice what I preach about backing up important information from my hard drive. Often I find it to be a pain in the butt to back up my files, so I figured I would give Mozy’s service a try. I will admit that at first I was a bit skeptical because I run the Windows Vista 64 Bit operating system. I expected to receive a message telling me that this service was not compatible with my operating system. To my surprise, I was wrong. The software was downloaded and installed quickly on my machine with no issues. Within ten minutes I had the program up and running on my computer.
I have been very impressed with Mozy’s online backup service for my home. Now I don’t have to worry about my computer being backed up or even storing CD’s or tape cartridges down at my local bank because the program is always running in the background storing my important documents, photos and music at a secured site.
I did find one drawback to Mozy’s program. You are not able to backup data from external hard drives. I have a networkable hard drive that is attached to my home network using an Ethernet cable. I can’t back up this information while taking care of the files on my internal hard drive. If I want this information backed up, I will have to move this information to my computer. While an extra step in the process, it is not so difficult that I wouldn’t use this service. In fact, I think this service overall is a home run.
If you too are a bit skeptical about using an online backup service, one of the great things about Mozy is that you can use it for free. You are allowed to use the service to backup 2 gigs of data for one PC no charge. Mozy won’t even ask you for a credit card number when you sign up for the free service. If you like the service (like I do), you can go ahead and purchase the unlimited backup service for a little under $55.00 a year or even get a bigger discount if you purchase it for two years. While not free, if you have additional computers on your home network you can add them to your service for an additional cost.
I would strongly recommend Mozy’s Online Backup for Home for anyone interested in an easy way to protect their important computer files.