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World Backup Day: Mozy app puts backed-up files at your fingertips

by Steven Sande Mar 31st 2011 at 3:00PM

Here's another product for World Backup Day. Mozy, a well-respected and veteran cloud backup solution for Mac and PC, has delivered Mozy to the App Store. This app, which is a free download that works with any iOS device, gives you access to all of those files from your computer that have been backed up to Mozy's servers.

If you're a subscriber to Mozy's service, you can view files from any of the computers backed up to your account. The app tells you when the last backup was completed, and navigating to the individual folders is a matter of a few taps.

Once you've found a file that you're interested in using, numerous actions are available -- with a tap, the file can be emailed or opened in a compatible application on your iPhone or iPod touch. Photos stored on your computer can be published to Facebook, viewed in high resolution, or saved to your local camera roll as well.

What's cool about this is that it provides much of the functionality of Dropbox (cloud storage) while ensuring that your Mac or PC is being backed up at the same time. Of course, the Mozy app doesn't provide the offline access that Dropbox for Mac and PC does, but neither does the actual Dropbox iOS client. (Update: According to commenter Rdnymllnsktr, it is possible in the Dropbox app simply by tapping the star below a viewed file. That downloads the file as a Favorite, and it is then available to open in a compatible app.)

If you have 2 GB or less of critical data that you need to back up, Mozy provides a free account. This is also a great way to try out the backup service. Paid accounts are available over the 2 GB limit for US$5.99 a month for 50 GB (and one computer) or 125 GB (and up to three computers) for $9.99 monthly.

Here at TUAW, we're trying to get out the word about World Backup Day to make sure that you're not part of the estimated 80% of computer users who don't have current backups of data. As I always tell computer users, if you haven't lost data yet, you will. "Set and forget" backup services such as Mozy, Backblaze, BackJack, CrashPlan and Carbonite are a low-cost and simple way to keep a copy of your data offsite in case of a local catastrophe.


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Here's another product for World Backup Day. Mozy, a well-respected and veteran cloud backup solution for Mac and PC, has delivered Mozy...
 

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12 Comments

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Mac

Personally I like SugarSync for Cloud back-up over Dropbox or Mozy. You get 5GB free, you don't need to put your files in some special folder to sync them and the iOS app easily allows for offline (ie on-device) storage. It doesn't slow down my Mac at all for backing up and only uploads the changes to files not the whole files. But the 5GB free is the nice bit imho. They integrate with the Docs2Go app too for file editing.

That's my 2-cents on it. I know I sound like I'm promoting, but been using it for a year and just think it seems the under-marketed solution.

April 06 2011 at 4:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Ryan

I never realized Mozy sucked so bad on Mac until they raised the prices and caused me to start looking around. I ended up with Backblaze, which is reasonably priced and, more importantly, doesn't cause my computer to slow down when backing up. In version 2 of Mozy, they quit using fseventer and instead opted to walk through the directory structure on every backup. The disk never stops spinning. Horribly inefficient. Too bad EMC bought Mozy and flushed it down the toilet.

April 02 2011 at 4:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
taw

Love to try it.

March 31 2011 at 10:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Matt

Livedrive.com are offering 25% off (www.Livedrive.com/worldbackupday) and have realtime steaming in their iOS client. Best backup software I reckon

March 31 2011 at 5:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
hangon

used to be a mozy user .... then they raised the price so high i had to switch

i now use backblaze and i'm delighted .... bye bye mozy

March 31 2011 at 4:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
brianminor

Too bad they are way overpriced now.

March 31 2011 at 3:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to brianminor's comment
TMC

Exactly. Way too much. Now using CrashPlan with near to 500gb stored... for $5/mo.

I celebrate world backup day every day. My system is redundant (local+cloud), and fully automatic.

March 31 2011 at 4:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
alanhudson

Perhaps today should be renamed US Backup Day as the app doesn't appear to be available in the UK App Store. Or possibly anywhere apart from the US?

March 31 2011 at 3:39 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mike

I use Mozy, have for a long time, and it's been pretty nice, always improving... but one caveat. It just doesn't want to back up my external. That's a big caveat of course, and if they fixed it I'd be ok but if I have to do things manually then I'm just going to move to Amazon.

March 31 2011 at 3:36 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
vnavone

The idea of an iOS ap for their service is great, but be warned: I've heard nothing but bad things about Mozy from the many coworkers who have tried them. Apparently the backup part goes fine, but restoring from a backup turns out to be extremely difficult or impossible. I hear good things about BackBlaze, or Amazon A3 and Carbonite.

March 31 2011 at 3:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rdnymllnsktr

Incorrect. If you star items on the iOS DropBox app, then they are downloaded and available for offline access.

March 31 2011 at 3:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Rdnymllnsktr's comment
Rdnymllnsktr

Glad to see the update in the post. :-)

March 31 2011 at 4:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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