Mac & Windows backup - Mozy or iDrive
A while ago I used the trial of Carbonite for online backups of my Windows machine, I liked the software, but didn’t like the fact it didn’t have Mac backup.
After doing some research for a while, I’ve decided to focus on Mozy and iDrive as they seem to have the best support for both Mac and Windows.
Here’s the setup at home:
Windows XP machine - Acts as file & media server as well as remote DVR server.
Intel iMac - Primary machine, what we do all the day to day stuff on
All our important files are stored on the XP box, which does not have direct access to the Internet.
I’m backing things up via Backup on the Mac and the Windows Backup in XP, but wanted something offsite as well in case the backup media goes bad, is stolen or the whole house burns down.
Both Mozy and iDrive seem like very good options and here’s some of the things I’ve found during my testing, I’m formatting this as a comparison between the two and this is strictly the residential version of the service, not business (which both provide):
- Both offer a free trial of 2 GB
- Space:
- Mozy has a pro version with unlimited space
- iDrive offers pro version with 150GB
- Pricing:
- Mozy - $4.95 / month or $54.45 a year (one month free)
- iDrive - $4.95 / month or $49.50 a year (two months free)
- Speed, based on my testing:
- Mozy I average around 800Kb/s with throttling set to 100% usage, but it drops to 0 frequently
- iDrive I averaged around 1,500Kb/s with throttling set at 70% usage.
- Convenience:
- Although you have to pay the fee per computer, Mozy lets you manage them under 1 user account.
- With iDrive you have to pay the fee per computer, but you also have to create two separate logins as they claim they technically can’t do it under one.
I’m still testing and was leaning toward Mozy because of the unlimited space and the convenience of having them under the same account.
The speed is starting to be an issue for me though, there’s really no point in having unlimited space if you can’t use it because the transfer is too slow.
If anyone have experience with either, or both, please post your results. 
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Comments
Hello Steve,
Thank you for the kind words regarding IDrive. I just wanted to point out a few things to aid you in your comparison. First and foremost “unlimited” is just a marketing gimmick used by Mozy and Carbonite. For all practical purposes, with the way their solutions are engineered, you can realistically backup around 50GB worth of data before you start to encounter very significant performance issues. You can still technically go higher, but at very poor performance speeds and user-frustration.
IDrive on the other hand has been engineered to easily reach 150GB without performance degradation. Also, as you have seen from your own evaluation, IDrive performs inherently faster than Mozy (and Carbonite) due to the way we’ve engineered it… better data compression, multiple levels of optimization, streamlined code, etc. in addition to world-class datacenters on the backend.
IDrive also offers some key features that Mozy (and Carbonite) do not, such as True Archiving and lightning-fast file search capabilities (akin to the speed of a Google search). I invite you to consider these as well during your evaluation.
Best Regards,
Robert Haines
Business Development Mgr.
http://www.idrive.com
Hi Robert,
I appreciate the response and additional info as I’m trying to remain objective in my decision.
If you decided to go with Mozy, you can get a 10% discount code from http://www.unlimitedbackup.net.
Martin
Interesting read. I found another service that seems to do all these do and also helps recover lost computers. BackUPMAX Online Backup is a new service I think you should have a look at.
Not sure where Robert got his 50GB number. Mozy has several MozyHome Unlimited customers happily using over 1 TB (1000 GB). I’m sure Mozy is losing money on those customers, but we are true to our word. Unlimited really means unlimited.
With customers like General Electric that you know have done their due diligence before backing up their 200K+ desktops, you can rest assured that Mozy isn’t some fly-by-night company. We’re now owned by EMC, a fortune 200 company. Shady “marketing gimmicks” just wouldn’t fly.
I really like iDrive.
Even though you only the 150 Gigabytes, that’s enough for me and it’s hella fast!
** edited by Steve to change 1.5 Gigabytes to 150