Decho Mozy Home review

This review was updated on the 14/09/2011 after a group test of 13 popular online backup and file syncing services

Mozy Home provides unlimited online backups for one PC and any USB and eSATA hard disks connected to it. Network locations can’t be backed up, though, and some file types are restricted. This includes Windows system and application files, as well as ISO disc images.

When you first install the software, it analyses the contents of your hard disk, telling you how many files and how much space is taken up by music, word processor documents, email and a few other loose categories. You can select any of these categories to back up or – if you want finer control – select none and choose individual folders later. By default, Mozy protects files with 448-bit Blowfish encryption that it handles automatically, but it also offers 256-bit AES encryption with a user-generated key.

The well-designed interface makes it easy to pause or throttle the speed of uploads. It can back up to a daily, weekly or monthly schedule, and when it’s running in its default backup-when-idle state, it can be set to only start when the computer has been inactive for set amount of time or when the CPU load is below a certain percentage.

There are no options for sharing files with others. Files can be downloaded from the web, but there’s no facility to preview documents or play media files. The main method of restoring files is via the Mozy client or the virtual drive that Mozy sets up in Windows Explorer. The latter isn’t just a matter of clicking and dragging, though – everything has to be restored via a right-click menu, which also gives access to up to 30 days’ worth of previous file versions. A similar Explorer menu is used to add files to the backup queue. The ability to restore from a DVD or USB drive sent in the post is a welcome time-saver.

Mozy Home is an excellent, straightforward backup service, and we’re particularly impressed by its software interface. However, we prefer the flexibility and sharing options of Livedrive, which also costs slightly less.