Decho MozyHome Unlimited review

MozyHome is excellent value.

A free, fully functional 2GB service comes with email support, while the $4.95-a-month service is the cheapest here to offer unlimited capacity. You can only use it with one PC, but it will back up entire disk volumes and external disks, except NAS devices. It won't back up system files, but a preferences option deactivates this exclusion.

Last time we reviewed MozyHome (Labs, Shopper 243), its 448-bit encryption produced big files that were slow to back up and restore, but this time its performance was competitive. Backups are made when the system is idle or according to a schedule, and it's easy to throttle, suspend or manually invoke a backup. Specific files, folders or disks are selected for backup via Windows Explorer's right-click menu. Alternatively, the Windows client lets you include certain file types, or to filter by size, name or date. This is ideal for catching files that have been saved in unusual locations.

Restoring is less well implemented. The right-click menu and virtual drive in My Computer restore files only to the most recent backed-up version. The control panel lets you search by date, but a date must be selected and then browsed to see if the desired file was backed up on that date. This is far more cumbersome than selecting a file and viewing a list of backed-up versions. All versions backed up in the previous 30 days are recoverable, but we would prefer a sparser file history stretching back further. It's possible to restore files using the web interface, but it's too convoluted for casual access to data. However, one significant advantage is an option to receive restoration DVDs in the post, which could be a lifesaver if lots of data needs to be recovered quickly.

Author: Ben Pitt