I finally got around to working on one of my New Year’s resolutions (I am not saying which New Year!): doing better backups for the computers under my administration.

I used to do my own backups, but it is a hassle. CDs need administration, hard disks need attending to. I must have spent hours keeping track of stuff, fixing problems, and what have you. I am not alone in this, see http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/09/why_smart_peopl.html

To name one problem: Outlook personal store files (pst) get big, so a full backup takes ages, and if Outlook is still open, a straight copy fails.

So, if you have a broadband internet connection, remote backup is the place to go. I researched a number of services, and finally settled on mozy. It has all the features you want, and no other. Installation is just a 1.8 Megabyte download, the first 2 gigabytes of storage are free, and after that it is $5 a month. I won’t go into all the features. If mozy does not have it, you probably do not need it for backup purposes. The client is a simple, user friendly, small and efficient application. The only downside: Windows XP only, Mac is in the works.

The alternatives I looked at include http://www.drivehq.com/ which has more features for sharing big files, and www.pelicanbackup.nl which is also quite nice. Unix/Linux people might want to look at http://www.rsync.net. For local backups you may want to have a look at syncback from http://www.2brightsparks.com/

So, do yourself (and me) a favor and go to mozy now, using this link.