Mozy remote back-up - seems to work well

I am currently trialing Mozy, a remote back-up service. Here is how it works.

You create an account and tell Mozy which directories you want to be backed up. Mozy runs in the background when your PC is online - it can cope with interruptions - and makes a, say, daily (you set the frequency) back-up of the files that have changed since the last back-up.

If you need to restore, you tell Mozy which back-up you want to restore, and it creates a remote copy of the directories you need to restore. You can then download these to wherever you want to put them.  For data-volumes up to 2GB the service is currently free; for more than this you have to pay a modest monthly fee.

Mozy has a well-implemented feel, and uses what to my semi-amateur eye look like solid and secure encryption, with the option to choose your own encryption key instead of the one provided by default. Technical support is by email, and, despite my use of the free service, was quick, clear, and efficient.

Have I given up making a weekly local back-up of my 6GB of data? Not yet. But for the first time I am tempted to rely on a third party solution. And for readers who do not make back-ups of any sort (own up, you know you are out there) Mozy must surely be much, much better than nothing.

Update - 14 October 2006. For a brief comparative review of different remote back-up services, dated 31 January 2006, but with over 250 comments on it, see http://www.techcrunch.com/tag/Openomy/.