I use in the back up strategy of having one local backup and one remote backup. If your house burns down, I still have a copy of your data thats not in my home. In Febuaray I signed up for a paid Mozy account, an internet back-up provider to take care of the offline backup. I had been trying the free version of their beta software for several months and was happy with the way the software performed. Also, they were the only ones to offer a Mac version.

My goal was to back up just my home folder. The total size of the folder is about 80 GB, with my itunes folder taking up about 30 gigs and my photos folder taking up about 40 gigs. Knowing that Mozy has bandwidth limitations I’ve let it back up in sections. I first let it back up my Documents folder then enabled the Music folder and now I’ve enabled the Photos folder.

It’s taken about 3 months to back up my itunes folder. Thats a long time and the biggest limitation is the upload speed and the amout of data that can be uploaded in a day. Both of which are imposed by Mozy (I will add the specifics when I can find them). I can uplodad an unlimited amout of data.

I have used the restore function a few times for small amounts of data, but if I need to restore the entire data set I can request they send me it via snail mail via physical media for small fee.

They charge $5 a month but I signed up for 2 years at $99. Seems like a good price compared to trying to set up my own server in a remote location.