Time Machine is great, but unfortunately, it stores your backup in the same place as your computer. A house fire, burglary, tornado or other natural disaster could mean both your computer and your backup data are both gone. The only true way to be safe it to keep a copy of your backup data in another physical location. Sure, you can take a HD to work or give it to a friend, but the hassles of that are just too much. And, of course, you have to spend $125 to $175 for a large, external hard drive, which have their own issue of being lost or damaged.
There is a better way now: A company called Mozy (an EMC company) is offering 2 GB of free off-site backup for your Mac or PC. If you use the coupon code 59C77F in the referal box when you sign up, you can get an extra 256 Meg of space. (Use https://mozy.com/?ref=59C77F to enter the coupon code directly, or click https://mozy.com/registration/free and enter 59C77F when prompted for the referral code to get an extra 256 MB free.) Note, f you follow this link, scroll to the bottom of the page for the free service link.)
Or, if you need unlimited space, for only $4.95/month, you can get personal (home use) unlimited backup on the same system. Free accounts can be upgraded later, so yo can always start with a free one, and if you like it, update it later.
It is easy to use. You download a free, a small utility to install on your Mac or PC. After installing, you simply select what you do and do not want backed up, and in the background or over night, this utility will copy your files to their secure servers, where a copy of your important stuff is kept. Only you with your password can recover the files, and they use key encryption (use your own, or they provide a random one for you) to keep the transfer and files safe as well.
To restore, go to their website, log in, and and select the files you want to restore. Then, you can pull them back over the internet, or even order a DVD with all your files if you need a lot of data back and do not want to download it all.
We all keep talking about backup, so here is a chance to get a free place to put your important documents that you do not want to loose, or backup all your pictures, music or what ever if you want to pay the $60/year to have a secure unlimited backup. Best of all, it is out of your home, so even loss, fire, or theft of your computer will not loose your important data.
OK, 2.25 GB is not much space, but that is free, and I put all my word and excel docs up there, and a few databases so I can easily get at them now. I may convert to the paying service (which you can do at any time) and start saving everything up there, but this was a start for off-site backup.
It does work better if you have broadband of course, and the first upload takes a lot of time to move everything you selected; I just let it run over night. But after that, only changed or new files are uploaded, so it should go faster from then on. And deleted files are kept on the backup for 30 days, and then deleted automatically for you, so you have time to change your mind.
A warning to Entourage users: Entourage keeps all your email, contacts, and calendar info in one large file, that gets larger over time. That means if you read email, that one large file gets updated, and then the backup is going to want to save that same one large file to the server again each day, and that takes a lot of time. If saving email is a requirement, you may want to switch to Apple’s email application, calendar, and contact manager, where each email is a file of its own, and backups will be MUCH faster.
Go to https://mozy.com/?ref=59C77F to get started, or user 59C77F in the referral code to get an extra 256 Meg right away. Mozy is an EMC company, the makers of Retrospect backup software, and a VERY large corporation in the computer security space, so this should be a low risk proposition. I have been using it for several days now, tried both backup and restore, and it works great.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.