I've started using Mozy for automated back-up and am quite split on my oppinion.
I use it for my laptop (all of my desktop computers were damaged during the move - not to self: file claim), however, it does not back-up network shared drives. This means that files on my shared network drive - my most important - cannot be backed up.
My gut says they're doing this to try to force small businesses into a more expensive plan to buy Mozy for individual file servers, but that fails to cover networked hard drives - an asset more and more families are buying.
So if Mozy is only backing up files that are on my laptop - but not the important drives on my shared drive - do I really get much of a benefit for $60 a year?
It certainly means any unimportant files worked on the road are covered.
It also means that off-line copies of files are backed-up, but it doesn't mean that important files - or the most current copy of them - are backed up.
I suppose I can mark more files for off-line copies, but that really doesn't suffice.
I do have an external hard drive I used to back-up my network drive. Mozy should back-up that drive if it's connected to the lap top. But what does that get me? A back-up of my back-up? Does this mean I still need to use automated back-up software other than Mozy - which I hate!
More investigation is needed here. Until Mozy addresses the networked drive issue, I can't recommend it - they don't care enough about their customers.
Regards, makingourway
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your shared network drive...is that on a computer running windows (hopefully xp and not vista)? if so, you *could* think about running mozy on that computer to overcome the "can't backup networked files issue". that being said, in my opinion, relying on online backup solutions is only a partial plan. for me, i would want to set up and schedule batch files (or scripting if you know how to do that, but i don't) to run so that my important files/partitions were backed up to a hard drive at home. then i would backup that backup (which should be one file if files from multiple locations are being backed up) online.
i've thought about online backups and, with currently available technology, they're not the best option just because backing up what you really want backed up takes a *long* time. backing up anything bigger than, say, 3 or 4 GB will take a long time, so that you can't to daily online backups.
i prefer having a "full" backup at home because then i have quick access to those files, in case something goes wrong. if your only backup is online, then it'll take a while to download it. the only situation i can think of where online backup beats at-home backup to hard drive dedicated to backups is where there's a fire/flood or theft (if someone steals the backup hard drive). at this point, i've thought about burning a dvd or two once every two weeks or every month and giving it to a friend or mailing it to my parents but haven't done it yet because i'm too lazy. ^.^ i haven't looked much into dealing with a fire/flood situation because it doesn't seem likely that that'll happen (knock on wood), but, unless upload speeds get a *lot* better soon, i'll probably either (a) burn to dvd and store the dvds off-site or (b) buy two identical external hard drives, backup to whichever is hooked up and keep the other one off-site (switching them every two weeks or each month).
you should maybe look into acronis as a backup solution. you can create a batch file to run the backup and schedule it as you like using windows task scheduler.
for auto-syncing, you should consider synctoy. i use it and it works fairly well. i just use the "echo" function.
i myself use mozy home (the free version) but that's just to backup my super-important files which are under 500 MB.
you can hit me at zzzhsryahoocom (insert @ and . as appropriate...it's a yahoo account) if you have any questions.
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