Pricing and Conclusion

The price for MozyHome ranges from free for storing up to 2 GB from up to two computers, to $4.95/month (per computer) for unlimited transfers/restores/data. Signing up for a year will cost $54.45, but save you $4.95, while signing up for two years will cost $103.95, but save you $14.85.

Although the storage space is "unlimited", Mozy's website notes that after storing about 200,000 files, performance will start to degrade to the point where it is unacceptable. Most home users shouldn't have much of a problem with the space offered, unless they try to use it for full backups or commercial purposes.

Mozy offers Pro and Enterprise versions of the software for business users. Among their other features, both add support for Windows Server 2000 and 2003 to MozyHome's support for Windows 2000, XP and Vista (and Mac OS X 10.4). They also add the ability to back up SQL, Exchange and file servers as well as networked shares and mapped drives. This flexibility comes at a price, however, namely $3.95 + $0.50/GB per month for desktop Pro licenses and $6.95 + $1.75/GB per month for servers.

An important point to remember is that although Mozy includes unlimited data storage for your backups, this does not mean you can store unlimited data. The only data stored on mozy.com is that which the MozyHome agent backs up. There is no file transfer utility, and deleted files are only stored for 30 days. Neither of these things mean Mozy is a bad deal; however, it does mean that it is not a complete replacement for normal backups. The flip side of the equation is that you don't pay per GB for storage or transfers.

Although MozyHome is not a perfect solution that will satisfy every user, it does provide a compelling and easy backup method for normal home users who otherwise might not have a copy of their data if they lost it. With low monthly prices, easy-of-use, unlimited storage, and good features, Mozy offers a product that's hard to ignore.

Tags: Backup, EMC,

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