The Flessner Family

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Moxy seems to be a pretty awesome online backup service. I can’t say it’s the best because I haven’t tried any others, but it seems very easy and secure (and free!). You only get 2GB of space (2.25 if you use my referral code: ‘CMNX55′!), but for the data that really requires backing up, that should be decent. Plus the program is a dummy-proof auto-backup software that continually monitors your files and updates changes. It’s all secure too, with 448-bit Blowfish encryption (that’s good) that happens on your computer even before you transfer it over the 128-bit secure SSL layer. (Yes, nerds, that’s redundant, but it’s for people who don’t know what SSL means!)

I especailly loved their descriptions of alternatives to their service (my comments in [brackets]):

• Burn a new CD or DVD every Sunday night and store them at your brother-in-law’s office. [Or, in my case, it was my mother-in-law’s home safe]
• Pay $200/year for an online backup service that uses old, mediocre software.
• Buy a $200 external hard drive and hope your office doesn’t burn down. [I have several of these, but really want fire insurance. Sorry.. fire-proof safes aren’t always all that fireproof…]
• Do nothing and don’t worry about backup. (We suggest closing your eyes, plugging your ears and repeating “I’m in my happy place, I’m in my happy place.”) [< -- Awesome!]
• Run a cron job of rsync, gzip and mcrypt piped over ssh to your friend’s server over his DSL line. [I consider myself a nerd and would STILL not really like this option]

A couple other alternatives I thought up were:

• Use your huge gmail/yahoo/hotmail account storage limits as online backups - this is fine, but then you have to manage everything yourself or get some kind of patched-together program that might do it automatically for you
• Use your web-hosting’s ginormous disk space - This was actually going to be my first option, and I’ll still use it for the really big stuff (though Mozy has a $5/month option with unlimited storage that is pretty cool)

All in all, it seems like a great service. And the user-interface of the program you install is so easy that a computer-inept person can figure it out, and a computer ept person can configure and tweak it to do just what you want.

Give it a try, it’s pretty awesome.