:: Intrepid Spaniel ::

We know we SHOULD backup or important data, but it somehow gets put to the bottom of the TODO list.. it’s not glamorous, but there are times when you’d really be glad you did back it up. So if it is easy, secure, and FREE*? Why not..

Secure offsite backup is a really good idea, but it usually comes with a high price, either in time invested or money. Then I discovered Mozy. Mozy is a free online backup, which even allows you to use your own text, picture, or other file to create a key so even they don’t have access to your data..(or you can use their key if you aren’t worried about government subpoenas and the like, and can keep track of your key yourself) They allow you to backup 2GB for free, which would take care of a lot of small business needs, or at least your financial data. If you have a lot of precious digital photos, 2GB might not be enough… in which case Mozy offers 30GB for very reasonable $5/month.

From their site, here are some alternatives to Mozy and learn how to sign up.

* Burn a new CD or DVD every Sunday night and store them at your brother-in-law’s office.
* Pay $200/year for an online backup service that uses old, mediocre software.
* Buy a $200 external hard drive and hope your office doesn’t burn down.
* Do nothing and don’t worry about backup. (We suggest closing your eyes, plugging your ears and repeating “I’m in my happy place, I’m in my happy place.”)
* Run a cron job of rsync, gzip and mcrypt piped over ssh to your friend’s server over his DSL line.

I laugh because the last one is pretty much what I do, although I just use ssh encryption and don’t bother with mcrypt…. but for the rest of us, there is Mozy…

*The catch?
Right now it is for Windows XP only. (the are working on a Mac version)
You must sign up for a weekly email newsletter, which will have advertising in it. But if this is written with even half the wit of their site, I might actually read it instead of filtering it to the trash..
If you need more than 2gb you might need to pay, but these prices seems very good compared to the competition…

That’s it.. sounds like a fair trade. Right?

To partake of this goodness, please tell them I referred you, and both I and you get another 256MB of free backup..
Just use this link to sign up. https://mozy.com/?ref=9ZYHRF
or put in my email ben@nickell.org, when you sign up…

How many photos will 2gb hold? In terms of digital photos, that depends on a lot of things but the most important is resolution, and here is some idea of how many images you could store if they were taken in jpg format.

2Megapixel images == 2274 images
3MP == 1706 images
4MP == 1024 images
5MP == 818 images
6MP == 640 images
7MP == 576 images
8MP == 480 images..

If you are using something fancy like jpg+raw format, your space won’t go as far…