Mozy provides space online for you to backup your files. There are two levels of service, for home and business users, plus a completely free offer for home users which provides 2Gb of storage for nothing, forever. The paid home service is cheap in any case, at $5 a month with discounts for longer term payments, and for that you get unlimited space to backup all your precious documents, movies, photos and so forth.

It has some limitations: it's a backup, rather than storage, solution, so it isn't designed to allow you to share your files with others. And transfer speeds are possibly going to be much slower than you would expect, especially if you have a fibre-optic connection and you're running at 15Mb/s or more. Your initial backup, if you're doing the whole system in one go, could last days, or even weeks, though of course that's a one-time episode and subsequently, only files that have changed in the last couple of hours will be backed up. Even so, you might find the low speed irritating. I've read that this and other similar services are generally capped at less than 5mbps, sometimes as low as 1.5mbps, which is impossibly slow for a storage solution but fine if you're running overnight backups. Lastly there is as yet no mobile option, so you can only restore your files to your desktop, but that's likely to change eventually as mobile devices continue to proliferate.

More restrictions may switch in if you're using the service too vigorously, and Mozy reserves the right to curtail your usage if it feels that you're "overusing" the system. It's not clear when this might happen or what the trigger might be, but it's obviously a consequence of the service being cheap, and not intended for constant transfers back and forth. If you're looking for online storage that offers faster and more frequent access to files you use regularly and maybe also need to share, you'll need to look elsewhere.

Mozy is one of the major players in this field, it has been operating successfully for years and it has solid corporate backing. Your files will be encrypted in transmission at the highest possible level, and of course Mozy promises that it won't peek at your content or even consider selling it to anyone else. This, along with the unlimited space on offer, makes it a good business choice too, and so far 50,000 businesses have apparently trusted their sensitive files to Mozy. The business rates, which apply per desktop and per server, are also inexpensive, currently at $3.95 +0.50 cents/Gb and $6.95 +0.50/Gb a month, respectively.

Mozy has recently rolled out a UK and an Irish service too, at the. co.uk and. Ie sites, respectively. I don't think it really matters which you use, but if you prefer to have your files stored more locally and to deal in Euros or Sterling, you may want to look at the new options now available.

There is a competing service called Carbonite (www.carbonite.com) which is virtually identical to Mozy, but a touch cheaper with the current promotions. The free offer here is 15 days of unlimited storage, there is no permanent free option, and the fees, which are the same for either home or business users, are for annual or longer periods with no monthly rate available. Both services otherwise offer identical features, as far as I can tell, and both have their fans and critics but both are good options for online backups. Both are suitable for both Windows PC and Mac, so you might want to try each and see which feels easier or more comfortable for you. In any case, it's hard to find an argument against using the free 2 gigs that Mozy is handing out, even if you choose Carbonite for your main backups.

For the average home user, there's no great urgency to try out online or "cloud" storage; both portable and internal hard drives are rapidly growing in size and easily keeping pace with increasing demand. Of course you run the risk of ending up like me, with a desk strewn with USB drives, and I've still not got enough spare space to make a backup copy of anything. If the dog knocks a drive off the table, I risk losing up to a Terabyte of data, but so far I've never got around to looking at a better solution. So I'll probably be giving Mozy's free 2 gigabytes a try now; that'll be plenty to store a backup of my most important documents and images if I can still remember which drive I put them on. I think it has to be worth anyone checking out, while the price is right.