This “user experience” write up is not presented as a technical review of Mozy. I felt there were plenty of other reviews that get into that level of detail. To me, it seemed like it would be more interesting to share my experience over the past year regarding the type and quantity of data I have in my Mozy backup set.
Jason’s recent post titled Online “Backup” got me thinking about my own personal backup solution. Over the past few years, the amount of data that I have collected seems to have grown exponentially. For me, my main goal for whatever backup solution I settled on was to ensure my data existed off-site.
I wanted to be safe from some of the following dangers:
- my house burning down – taking my collection of Ethiopian stamps, computer and all of my data with it
- a space rock falling from the sky and crushing my computer (and probably my house)
- Arizona experiencing freak super-floods and my computer gets washed away
As you can imagine, any one of these possibilities frighten me to think about. My digital existence could be wiped out in the blink of an eye.
My data consists of three major types – photos, video, and music. I have very little documentation that isn’t already on Google Documents, so losing school papers and such is not a huge concern for me. A rough estimate would indicate that 75% of my data is made up of photos, 13% (and growing) is made up of video, and 12% for my music collection.
(continues after the jump)
Photos
My photo collection has been growing consistently since 2002 after purchasing a 4 megapixel Nikon COOLPIX 4500. After taking a substantial amount of pictures with the COOLPIX 4500, I realized photography was something I had become more than slightly interested in. In 2006, I decided to take my interest in photography to the next level and purchase a prosumer 10 megapixel Nikon D200
Nikon COOLPIX 4500
When I was shooting with the COOLPIX 4500, it was fairly convenient to backup my images every so often to DVD, as I could fit many thousands of images per blank 4.7 GB DVD. On average, the size of the files coming off of the COOLPIX 4500 were between 1.0 MB and 1.5 MB. This solution still did not solve the problem I would be faced with if my house burned down.
Nikon D200
Shooting with the D200 changed my entire strategy. Due to the hardware capabilities of the D200, I decided at the very start that I would commit to shooting everything in RAW mode (NEF files). There were many times where I also opted to shoot a companion jpeg for convenience when dealing with email and web galleries such as Picasa. On average, compressed RAW files off of the D200 range from 7 MB to 11 MB. Early on, it became very clear that shooting with the D200 was going to require a new backup strategy.
Video
Canon VIXIA HF100
Between 2007 and 2008, I had a chance to shoot some HD video with a couple of different cameras. With the birth of our first child in 2007, I felt it was a perfect time to purchase a consumer HD video camera. With the fantastic reviews of the Canon HV20
With the Canon HF100, I also purchased a Transcend 16 GB SDHC
Summary
I skirted by for over a year with the D200 without any hard drive failures, house fires, or other natural disasters – and I was not any closer to coming up with any real solution to the problem of backing up my entire photo library. I had read about a number of online backup solutions during 2007. I started to consider that as a fantastic option, as many of them offered “unlimited disk space” plans for a nominal monthly fee. I had seen Carbonite recommended by a number of people, so I did some extended research into their service. Around the time I was researching various experiences with Carbonite, I came across some positive buzz about Mozy. Mozy was offering comparable service options with some additional features that made it a more appealing service.
One thing that ultimately made me decide to go with Mozy was the fact that they will give anyone (yes, even you) 2 GB of free backup space with their service. You can create an account and test drive their service to get a good feel for what you can expect from the premium service experience. For my trial period, I searched hard for a folder of images that kept my quota under 2 GB – which was somewhat challenging. I believe the folder I pointed it to contained only around 240 RAW images from my D200. Mozy’s free account was clearly not enough disk space for me and my files. ;)
For this article, I chose not to go into all of the technical aspects of how Mozy works, but rather show my real-world usage when it comes to my critical data. I would highly recommended Mozy to anyone that has critical data that they would cry real tears if there was a catastrophic failure of computer hardware or a disaster (such as fire) occurs at the place of storage. I am extremely satisfied with the quality and level of service I have had while subscribing to their Mozy Home Unlimited service. It just works, and works well! I have certainly took advantage of the “unlimited” feature, as I am just above 250 GB total with my backup set at this point. If you have any specific questions, please feel free to leave a comment!
Stats
My initial file transfer with Mozy took a few weeks and consisted of around 100 GB of data. The amount of data I am backing up now has more than doubled since then, and seems to grow by larger figures every year.
Here are a few charts breaking down how my backup data is split up by file type:
JumpDisk hasn't been perfect.. I'm still working out the kinks. It's definitely pricier than Mozy, and if (after this month) the S3/JumpDisk combo isn't doing it for me, I might switch to Mozy. Great article
Did you restore and do a file check? Is it a good backup?
The negative comments I see about Mozy mostly deal with the file restoration process. Carbonite, SpiderOak and others seem to have thought through data recovery more thoroughly –making it simpler.