One of the greatest, but least heralded benefits of high bandwidth Internet connections and cheap server storage space is that it has made backing up your data online a realistic proposition, even if that data runs to several gigabytes. Mozy from Berkely Data Systems, which is now available as a beta for the Mac, is far from being the first to market, but it might just be the best.

Mozy is available in two versions; the free version which allows you to store up to 2GB of data on Mozy servers, and the the unlimited version which costs $4.95/ month. There’s no charge for bandwidth, so you can back-up as often as you need to. Those prices compare well with other solutions such as MediaMax (mediamax.xom) - which has 25GB of storage with its free version but limits bandwidth to 1GB/month and charges $29.95 for a professional account - and Jungle Disk (jungledisk.com) which uses Amazon’s S3. JungleDisk has no free account and charges $0.15 per GB/month stored and $0.20 per GB transferred.

Mozy’s features include the ability to schedule incremental back-ups and a choice between public and private key encryption. Mozy stores thirty days worth of backups on its server, so if you need previously backed up versions of files, you can access them, albeit on DVD with next day delivery at extra cost.

‘The public beta was built by Mac engineers who understand the needs of the Mac community,’ said Josh Coates, founder and CEO of Berkeley Data. ‘With more than 1,000 participants in our limited beta, we’re excited to be the first to embrace the Mac community with this unlimited online backup service.’

Once you’ve downloaded and installed Mozy, it’s easy to get started. The Configuration screen opens automatically and invites you to create a back-up set. There are a number of preset backup sets such as; Address Book Contacts, iTunes Library, Word Documents, and Thunderbird Mail. You can choose one or more of those, create your own or select ‘Files and Folders’ to specify which files and folders to back up. A gauge at the bottom of the window keeps track of how much of your 2GB allowance you’ve used, if you’re using the free version. You then elect to allow Mozy to backup automatically when your Mac has been inactive for 30 minutes, or schedule a backup.

Disappointingly, the only scheduling option is every day at a set time: you can’t elect to have weekly backups. Also you can’t have backup sets which run independently of each other, so you could have important documents being backed up automatically while Address Book contacts are scheduled to back up overnight, for example. Our only other gripe is that Mozy adds itself to your menu bar without asking permission, which is a little irksome. It also takes a little while to scan backup sets when you open the configuration window. Hopefully these issues will be ironed out by the time the 1.0 release comes around.

Minor criticisms notwithstanding, Mozy is well-priced, easy to use and has some excellent features. And as its free for 2GB, there’s no reason not to download it and give it a whirl.

You can download the beta of Mozy here

Look out for a more extensive reiew in a forthcoming issue of MacUser

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