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. 
