Mozy

Mozy www.mozy.com Computers have become an essential part of our daily lives; the information we keep on them is valuable, sentimental and often vital. So what happens if you lose your computer in a fire or theft? As scary as it is to think about, disasters do happen and you have two choices in life: bury your head in the sand and hope it doesn’t happen to you, or back up, buddy. The safest option is to store your data off-site, and Mozy offers that very service, all wrapped in a user-friendly interface. Mozy does provide a paid-for service for both home and professional users, and if you have a lot to back up it’s worth considering the fairly inexpensive monthly fee. But you can store up to 2gig completely free if you’re a home user. Click the MozyHome tab at the top to find the free sign up button. There’s a few personal details to fill in, and the final registration page offers you more free space for referrals, which is a nice touch. After confirming your email address you get a link to download the backup software. Next step, install and then go through the configuration wizard, which will bring you to a page where you can select the backup sets you want - such as email & contacts, financial information and photos and images, even your browser bookmarks. If you’re on the free account the capacity bar at the bottom will tell you when you’re over the limit. The next dialogue tests the speed of your connection and then you’re told how long the back up will take to complete. Be warned it will likely be a long time for the first backup, but will be a lot quicker after that. Finally, make your choice about when you want the backup to start then click Finish.