Recently I had to rebuild the c: drive of my main desktop computer. Yes it was a pain. I had many programs installed there, and am still slowly reinstalling all the ones I use as I use them.
One thing that made the process easier was my online backup. Mozy stored all my program settings and configuration files (you know, the ones that live in c:\Documents and Settings\username
etc…) safely in their online backup structure. It was an easy matter for me to login to my Mozy account and retrieve them.
That saved me hours of rebuilding my settings for various applications and games.
Now, the free version of Mozy isn’t intended as a full system backup, you only get ~ 2GB of online storage. Mozy only backups local drives, so a removable or network drive will be skipped, but the fact that backup is automated, intelligent, and configurable make it a winner.
I’ve also been looking at Xdrive (from AOL) recently. It’s 5GB of free online storage, but it doesn’t seem to have an automated backup facility. You just drag and drop whatever you want saved there, and gets saved there. It’s more of an online storage solution than a backup. Kinda cool if you need to keep your 4GB iPod Nano music where you can get at it online (provided you’re not firewalled at work or anything).
Xdrive allows you to store any file that your computer can see, so that does include network and removable media drives. And with Xdrive, you can share your files or folders, and manage access to them if need be.
I’ve just started playing with Xdrive, but if they just added the background backup function to Xdrive, I think it would challenge Mozy.
Technorati Tags: Online Backup, Backup, Xdrive, Mozy, utility, online, storage
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I use Data Deposit Box for my Online Backup. It does not restrict what you can backup. You can back up a network drive or other external mapped drives. You can also install it on as many PCs or servers as you like. It’s not free but they only charge for what you use.
Heh, yeah, with Free you get what you pay for. This looks like a cool service…thanks for the pointer!
Brad, you might be interested in this post (if you haven’t seen it already):
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/productivity/four-ways-to-automatically-backup-your-hard-drive.html
Dear Brad!
Thanks for your interesting blog article, I can definetly sign what you say about Online Backup. It’s the state of the art way to save files secure and reliable.
As a student you always have to do works, exams, presentations and so on. These files need to be stored on a secure media, not CDs or DVDs, which are a matter of easy damage (e.g. scratches, broken discs, …)
I experienced these problems myself, so I know what I’m talkin’ about!
Thus I searched the web for a list of Backup providers and found this site:
http://www.onlinebackupguide.com/the-top-ten-online-backup-services
Brad, I think it’s a good addition to your article about Backup providers, because you only mentioned Mozzy ord XDrive and on the Backup Guide site the top ten providers are listed and reviewed (capacity, price, service, …)
Hey Markus, thanks for the informative post! I really appreciate your link to the backup service list…and will likely try some of those out in the near future. And yep, it’s always good to know about more choices.
Brad
You guys tried Carbonite yet. I understand that it just came into Singapore and they are offering unlimited backup for less than S$7 a month. Automated too and works unobtrusively in the background. You can check it out at http://www.carbonite.com.sg.
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