Tyson Kirksey

***UPDATE 11/17/***
Funny how things work…merely three days after writing this post I receive this email from DataDepositBox:

“Dear Member,

Data Deposit Box™ is pleased to announce that effective November 15th 2006 backing up your computer online will cost just $2 per gigabyte per month. This represents a savings of up to 80 per cent for DDB customers.

Now $2 per month is all it takes to protect up to 1GB of your valuable computer data – there is no limit to how much data you can back up. You simply pay $2/GB for the storage you use.”

I guess I’ll stick with them now
***UPDATE***

I have spoken with several of you lately about whether or not you use a backup solution for your home or work computer. Personally, I have become a firm believer in regular backups (not because I have experienced a total data loss, but because I know people who have and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure).

For the past year or two I’ve been using DataDepositBox (www.datadepositbox.com) and I have no problem recommending this service. It has been rock solid and has all the features you could need. My one complaint is that it hasn’t adjusted its pricing structure as newer and cheaper solutions have come to market. With DDB, you pay for what you use, so my bill has been constantly going up. I’m now paying close to $15 a month for about 2GB of storage.

I’ve done a ton of research lately into alternatives for online backup, and there are some interesting options out there. Services like Box.net, xDrive, Mozy and Carbonite have really spiced up the market. Tonight I have decided to give Mozy a try for the following reasons:

1. It has all the important features I was looking for, including versioning and incremental backups. It can even backup files currently being used like my Outlook archive, so I’ll always have a fresh copy of my email.
2. It runs in the system tray just like DDB does, and I can configure when I want it to backup and when I want it to be idle (it won’t interfere if I’m using my computer).
3. It’s cheap! I’ll get the 2GB I’ve been using for free, and I can expand that to 30GB for only $5 / month. At the least I’ll be saving $10 a month for the same type of service.

Installation was pretty simple, and I’m about to begin the first initial download (which will take several hours, even with FiOS). I’ve read to many good reviews about Mozy to not be optimistic, though. If you don’t have a backup solution in place, I would strongly recommend you check out the options above and find something.

Tyson Technology