If you are like many of the computer users that I have known over the years, performing regular backups of your important files is often overlooked. Fortunately for people of that type (I’m not judging), Mozy Remote Backup is available.

There are two versions of Mozy, which is currently in beta, the free version and a version with a few more features available for a monthly fee. The free version comes with:

• 2GB of free, secure storage
• Open/locked file support
• Block-level differential backup
• 128-bit SSL support (to secure your data during transport)
• 448-bit Blowfish encryption (to secure your data on our server)
• Continuous or scheduled backup options

The fee base solutions offer more space for a month. As of this moment, 5GB is $1.95, 30GB is $4.95, and 60GB is $9.95.

I signed up and tried Mozy, to see if it could make my life easier. The download and install was quite painless, and I was up and running in minutes. I found the interface extremely easy to figure out. I managed to add my mysql database backup to their default choices, which I somewhat modified, and tested a backup. I noticed that he program was first gathering and encrypting my chosen data, then when that was done, it began uploading it to the remote server. Within a few minutes, it was all done (clearly I didn’t have a lot to backup, only a little over 11MB). I then chose to have it backup at a regular time every day. It will from now on only upload changes, and not the entire thing.

I then played around with the restore interface, which actually runs within your web browser. While I didn’t actually chose to restore anything, everything seemed as straight forward as the rest of the backup solution.

There are some limitations which see this as clearly aimed that the user who has less sophisticated needs in a remote backup solution. Everything has to be done through the interface provided. There is no ftp, sftp, or anything of that nature. The scheduler in question is integrated into the Mozy application, and does not run off of Windows scheduler, thus needing to have the Mozy application in memory for it to work, and you must be logged in. It is currently only available for the 32bit version of Windows XP, with a client for Mac OS X in the works.

Overall, I feel that if you’re an average home user of Windows XP who would like to to have the security of an easy to use remote backup, then I can recommend at least giving this a try. After all, it is available for free. If you have more sophisticated needs, I recommend you look elsewhere.