It took me about one week to backup 23+ GB of my data to Mozy. After doing some more reading, I decided that I really was not comfortable with Mozy having the keys to decrypting my files. Mozy gives you an option to use their encryption key or to provide your own. As you can guess, they really want you to use theirs which is what I did the first time around. First time around you ask, yep, to change your mind later requires you to delete your Mozy backup and start over. Note, this makes sense as the encryption actually takes place on your local computer before the files are sent to Mozy. There is no provided method to change encryption keys on data already backed up nor should you expect them to provide one as this would require computer resources on their site to accomplish this. You’d also have to provide them with the new key. Now ask yourself, if you give them the new key, what have you really accomplished?

I deleted my backup and started over last Sunday evening. It’s taken me almost six days to get everything re-encrypted and backed up on their site. The long poll is the limit that Mozy seems to place on uploading files. They cap out your upload to 1Mbit/sec. even though I have more bandwidth. Add to this the time it takes to encrypt each file, break it apart into smaller chunks and then verify that what was sent is actually what was received and you get 6 days to backup 23GBs of data.

I think I finally see the light

For the last eight years or so my life’s work has been done on a laptop’s hard drive. I’ve had a couple bad crashes and lost things but luckily, I’ve not lost everything. I try to do backups to an external drive but that does not happen as regularly as it should. Someone I know had their house burn down. Nobody was home at the time and nobody was hurt, but they lost everything. Insurance will replace the house, clothing, car, computers, etc. But the real loss was their electronic lives. They did backups to DVDs and an external drive but all of that was also in the house. This got me to think about my life a bit.

I finally decided to take the plunge and start backing up to an internet backup service. I did some research and most seem to offer similar features. The main requirement for me is a native Mac client. This cut down the list. I finally choose Mozy. Mozy offers an unlimited amount of storage for a fixed fee of $4.95 per month. That said, you’re limited by your internet connection and the software’s bandwidth throttling. At best, you get about 1Mbits/sec. According to their site you can backup around 9GB per day.

Most of the time you should not be backing up that much data as the software only backs up files that have changed since the last backup. The long poll is the first full backup. In my case it’s going to take a bit. I’m just backing up my user directory which has photos, iTunes, etc. I broke it down into a critical first backup, then added photos, next iTunes, and finally work stuff. After each backup completes, I add in the next grouping of files to be backed up. Once every thing’s backed up, the software runs based on a set schedule and internet access. I can travel and still have backups performed. I can grab something that was backed up via the internet and pull it down to a different computer.

Critical first backup 1.1GB

+ Photos = 10.4GB

+ iTunes = 11.2GB

+ Work = 20.9GB or 23,245 files.

My whole home directory = 53.4GB which is mostly virtual machine images, backup of my main 4GB thumb drive, German T.V. downloaded for Petra, and other misc software packages/downloads.

I guess my digital life is bigger than my real life. Petra has her basement, I have my hard drive.