No More MozyPro – Now It’s Jungle Disk
I had a short love affair with MozyPro, the online backup service. While I was intrigued and excited about MozyPro at first, over time it gradually became clear that I was excited about the idea of MozyPro. I really want my vital files to be backed up online. Online backups are a great compliment to an external hard drive, and an essential part of the system I use to guarantee my clients data. However, MozyPro isn’t the system I hoped it was…
So now we’re breaking up. I’ve found someone else, someone who understands my online backup needs. Someone called Jungle Disk.
Here’s what I like about Jungle Disk vs MozyPro:
- It’s fast. The little piece of software I downloaded was 4mb. When I installed and configured it, it took about 3 minutes. The same can not be said about MozyPro – the software is achingly slow during configuration. Setting up the original configuration on MozyPro took 10-15 minutes, most of which was time spent “What is taking so long?”
- It’s cheap. $2 a month for the software, plus $0.15 per GB of storage per month. MozyPro costs $5 a month for 1GB of storage, then $0.50 per GB after that. Yikes!
- It uses Amazon’s cloud server system for data storage. I’m a big fan of the concept, and Amazon is about as reputable as a company can get. They also have multiple servers worldwide, so it makes it easier for me to store and recover data during my travels.
- It works from multiple machines. One account for as many machines as you want! Awesome. I have two laptops, and I’ll be adding a desktop soon. These three all share the same files, now they can share the same backup account. MozyPro – not so much.
- No horror stories. With MozyPro, a quick search will reveal multiple stories of poor MozyPro customer service and lost backups. Lost backups! Maybe it’s just that Jungle Disk is new, but I couldn’t find any bad press.
- I can make my Jungle Disk backup drive “local.” Jungle Disk’s software allows you to map your backup drive as a networked drive, i.e. when I double click on “My Computer” I can copy and save files directly to my backup drive, as if it were a physical external drive.
- Jungle disk matches MozyPro’s encryption system. I’m no encryption expert, but you can set two levels of password protection, and you can encrypt data as it’s compressed. Sounds good enough for me.
- MozyPro’s account management system sucks. No offense to the talented people at MozyPro, but what the hell is the deal with the account management platform? It’s just about as confusing a system as I’ve ever seen. OH, by the way, you can’t cancel your MozyPro account without sending an email. WOW [sarcasm].
The only gripe I have with Jungle Disk – it’s not liking my intermittent Internet connection here in Costa Rica. Still, the MozyPro system had trouble with the connection here in Costa Rica too, so I don’t know that it’s much different.
The bottom line: MozyPro is expensive, slow, hard to manage, and the stories of lost backups are frightening. Jungle disk is fast, cheap, and backed by Amazon’s S3 cloud server network (which is as bullet-proof as you can get). All hail Jungle Disk.
Comments
Adam Apr 20th, 2009
Jungle disk also has a one time 20$ license you can buy. The only difference is it doesn’t come with the online tools, and you can add that for just 1$/mo.
Jason Lancaster Apr 20th, 2009
Adam – Thanks for commenting. I remember reading something about that on another blog when I was looking into JungleDisk, but then I couldn’t find it. Where is that option?
Petieg Apr 20th, 2009
Jungledisk Plus you can get it from the jd Web site for an add’l $1/mo. it is totally worth it… it allows for resume of interrupted uploads… and a web interface to your online data from any computer.
Mozy wasn’t finished uploading my data two weeks into using it on a Mac — jd did it in a day.
Simon Garlick Apr 20th, 2009
Jason – Adam is referring to the Jungle Disk “lifetime” license.
https://www.jungledisk.com/secure/signup/JungleDiskLifetime.aspx
I’ve been a JD customer for nearly a year, so my lifetime license has already paid for itself in savings over the monthly fee!
admin Apr 20th, 2009
Cool man I’ll check that out.
douglas cohn Apr 29th, 2009
I never comment online. Well obviously never is . UNTRUE HAHAHAHA
I am a consultant and I sell backup services. Jungle Disk is the best there is. I use it with all my favorite backup products as well as alone.
For example I love SyncbackSE and pro. If something needs syncback features but I want it offline as well I just point to the network drive I have with Jungle.
I have copies of my clients data on both Amazon and Now Rackspace. Jeez the price is so worth it and support is excellent.
LETS HOPE IT REMAINS LIKE THIS!!! Too often companies get ruined when bought out.
admin May 3rd, 2009
Doug – Good call. I think Jungle Disk is different – I have to say I’ve been nothing but impressed since installing their software.
Ron Jun 22nd, 2009
Does anyone out there know of an independent third-party confirmation that JungleDisk backups are encrypted as advertised?
Thanks!
Ron
Jason Lancaster Jun 23rd, 2009
Ron – I’m not aware of anything 3rd party, but that’s a good question.
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