. . Pog'sNotes . .

More than 6 months ago, I went out in search of a reputable free online storage solution. I don’t remember all the sites that made it onto my list but there weren’t very many. One, though, caught my eye: Mozy.

Mozy was still quite new at the time and there weren’t any substantial reviews of their service. I found a few discussions regarding encryption, keys and general security. However, these were almost totally useless since no one had actually used Mozy or even had any real understanding of what Mozy offered. In other words, it was mostly hyperbole and hysteria.

Basically, “Mozy is a secure, automatic remote backup service for any PC in any home”. Features include:

• Open/locked file support
• 448-bit Blowfish encryption
• 128-bit SSL encryption
• Automatic or scheduled backups
• New and changed file detection
• Block level incremental backups
• Bandwidth throttling
• File versioning
• Public or private key encryption

The Windows client software runs as a service, is highly configurable, can be bandwidth-throttled and really does not intrude much. About the only thing I’ve noticed is when it asks permission to update itself to a newer version.

As of writing this, Mozy offers 2GB of free storage or unlimited for $4.95/month. I personally don’t know how unlimited “unlimited” actually is since I only have a free account. There is a referral program which benefits everyone interested. Both referrer and the referred get an extra 256MB of space. That means if you sign up for the free account, you can get 2.25GB of space and I could get 256MB added to my account. A Mac client is also in the works but I’m not sure when it will be offered to general users.

If you feel at all inclined to reward me for the Photoshop/compatible plugins I’ve written, please consider signing up for Mozy via my referral link https://mozy.com/?code=M38QWM

Either way, Happy New Year!