our review (continued)
Then I was prompted to pick what type of encryption that I wanted to use. 
I chose to manage my own encryption key to see how the process worked. I entered a nine character phrase and then the key was generated. I was given a chance to save the key locally to a file. (We recommend saving your personal encryption key to a USB drive or something external.) 
After that, I was prompted to pick the files that I wanted to back up. To simplify this process Mozy preselected what they call backup sets. These are categories of files like pictures, word processing docs, spreadsheets and several others. This gives you a quick way to decide what types of files that you want to backup without browsing all of your directories. Then Mozy performed a speed test (mine came back at 595 Kbps) and informed me that it was fast enough for online backup. I was also informed that based on my speed that I could copy between 1.1 & 4.5 GBs per 24 hour period depending on the configuration. The spread from 1.1 to 4.5 GBs per 24 hour period confused me until I got to the next page in the wizard. In the next page I was allowed to configure whether I wanted a faster backup or faster computer, meaning that Mozy would throttle back on the bandwidth that they would use. It looked like they calculated about 3 hours for my 315MBs. It ended up taking about 2 ½ hours. 
You can control Mozy by right clicking on the tray icon. The options include: start backup, restore files, configure or status. If you pick status and a backup is in process then you will see a dialog with some status bars indicating the status of the backup. Otherwise, you are informed how long ago the last backup ran. You can also look at the history of each backup including every file that was backed up. The configuration allows for some advanced options including alerts, scheduling, throttling, etc. 
In my restore tests Mozy performed very well. When restoring from the client I was able to right click on the tray icon and choose “Restore Files”. The interface is fairly simple with the ability to choose individual files and folders as well as where you want them to restore. Since I was initiating from the client where the files originated from I didn’t have to provide my encryption pass phrase. I then restored to a completely different computer. There are 2 categories of restore, web restore & client restore. 
Since I was on a different computer I chose to do a web restore so that I didn’t have to download the client. It worked very nicely. I only restored 1 file for the test and I was warned throughout the process that the web restore was a good option for 20 GBs or less. Once I chose the file that I wanted restored I was informed that I would receive an email when my restore was ready. It only took a few seconds since I only chose one file. I downloaded the file, which was zipped up. I was then informed that my files were encrypted and that I would need to download their decryption utility. Once I downloaded it and ran it I was prompted to enter my security passphrase as well as the source and destination folders. After that I pushed the “Decrypt” button and then verified the file was decrypted. It worked flawlessly. 
Incidentally, I checked the file before the decryption process and it was indeed encrypted. Remember, that if you don’t manage your own encryption keys then you wouldn’t have to go through all of this. I think for the little bit of extra effort it was worth it. One last comment on this utility for decrypting your files. If you are worried about security then I believe that Mozy may be your best option. This is the only solution that I’ve tried so far that provides a separate decryption utility to decrypt your files once you’ve restored from the web. This is the only way to ensure that the files are indeed encrypted the whole time they are off your computer.
One last thing about restoring. I read somewhere that restoring via Mozy’s web restore option can take a long time especially if you have a lot of data (many, many GBs). I was just curious so I did a restore via the web of about 300 MBs. It took about eleven minutes before I received a link in my email box informing me that the download was ready. After that it took about 20 minutes to download the zip file. I imagine that if you tried to restore >20 GBs that this could take some time. Not only to prepare the download, but to actually pull the file down. If you’re in a hurry then you would want to select the files that were critical and pull those down separately. 
I really like Mozy and with the free 2 GBs of space that they’ve given me, I plan to use this to backup my “Documents” folder from now on.