Online backup has been a tempting possibility for years. Your files are automatically copied to safe online storage and kept up to date automatically at a reasonable price. Cool!

Until now the companies offering online backup services have looked a little flaky. I kept running into the name Mozy, though, which just introduced MozyPro as a business-level backup solution.

The idea is appealing. A small service runs on a Windows XP or Server 2003 computer; every two hours, new or changed files are copied to the Mozy online servers. The service relies on Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy service and can successfully back up files that are open; you’ll get a good backup of Quickbooks data while the program is running, for example. Files are archived so a deleted file or an older version of a file can be recovered for up to thirty days.

Pricing is reasonable – $3.95/month plus fifty cents per gigabyte.

The web interface is streamlined. What’s not to like?

Well, I found it a little troubling that it didn’t work, despite my best efforts. Dropped connections, a period of several days where it simply did nothing, and “success” reports where no files appeared to have been transferred.

Anecdotes are a dime a dozen. It might work brilliantly for you. I didn’t spend any time with tech support to figure out what was going on, and I’ll probably try it again in a few months. I was kind of hoping to have a wonderful success story to tell you about but – maybe next time.

Share This