This Internet tool I use in ministry came as an afterthought because I often forget I’m even using it, but it’s so critical that I have to mention it.

What is Mozy.com?
Mozy.com is an award winning backup service that offers 2GB of FREE online storage for all my important computer documents, emails, photos, music, address books, and more. It’s safe, secure and best of all, it’s so automated and easy to use that I often forget it’s even there. I’ve suffered from several computer crashes and hard drive failures in the past and I hate the process afterwards of trying to gather and re-enter contact info again, remembering details contained in certain documents that I’ll never see again and kissing all my hard work goodbye. But I also hate dealing with many of the other backup solutions out there that I’ve tried. They either don’t work, contain errors in the backups, require an external hard drive, or are difficult to set up.

Configuring backups is easy
Mozy’s service couldn’t be easier to configure! I can tell the Mozy software to backup certain types of files, specify certain files and folders to backup, or a combination of both, as you can see by clicking on the screenshots of my configuration below.

Restoring files is even easier
Restoring either individual files or my all computer’s data is just as simple. There’s a couple different options:

Option #1: The first restore option is to simply right-click on the file or folder that you want to restore and select “Restore Previous Version.” You can then select the version to restore, from the most recent version up to 30 days back.

Option #2: The second restore option is to restore via the Mozy Virtual Drive. You can find this when you open up “My Computer” on your machine and select the Mozy icon from the “other” category.

Option #3: The third restore option is to restore via the web. Go to the Restore page, login and select the computer and time/date you want to restore data from. Select all the data you want to restore.

Here’s a screenshot of the web’s restore interface and the software’s restore interface. Click the image to view it full size.

You can then choose whether or not you want to restore via download or, for a fee, have a DVD shipped to you. Make your selection, and the restoration process will begin.

How to get more storage space
Of course, 2GB of free online storage is not a whole lot of space when you have multiple hard drives filled with data, but at least it’s sufficient for backing up critical documents and files you can’t replace. If you need more space, you can get it for free by asking others to sign up for the service under your referral link (found under your account’s referrals page on Mozy’s site) as I’m doing here or you can purchase the unlimited plan for $4.95/month.

Conclusion
There’s a lot of backup solutions out there, but Mozy is the only one I’ve found that’s actually easy to use, works perfectly, and doesn’t pester me with errors. Plus, it’s completely free. I put too much hard work and time into the content I generate for my church and youth ministry to kiss it all goodbye due to a hard drive failure, system corruption or even having my MacBook Pro stolen.

Posted on November 26, 2007