You’ve seen the commercials on TV.  Mozy has the bizarre ads where a stove on fire drops from the sky and lands on a man’s laptop.  Carbonite’s ads are nothing to write home about, offering folks talking about their situation.

Both applications give you the same thing: the ability to backup your content in the event that the hard drive on your computer (whether it be desktop, laptop, PC or MAC) fails.  On paper, they are similar in many ways:

• Both provide unlimited, online backup with no maximum limits.
• The applications are easy to use and require that only a small application file be installed on your PC or Mac.
• There is automatic backup scheduling that includes an auto detect feature that launches the backup when it notices your computer is idle.  (No worrying about the backup launching when you’re in the middle of working on something!)
• They have similar security and encryption (128-bit SSL), which is the same technology that banks and credit card processors are using for their financial transactions.
• File restoration can be handled using any PC or MAC having a web browser and internet connection.
• Files and folders are selected using the standard folder tree functionality.
• After the initial backup, only new or updated files are backed up.

Pricing Options

• Carbonite offers a 15-day trial and 1-, 2- or 3-year subscriptions.  $54.95 a year!
• Mozy allows you to backup 2GB of data free, and offers a month-to-month plans as well as 1 or 2 year plans.  If you pay annually Mozy is $.50 cheaper than Carbonite.

Technical and Customer Support

• Carbonite offers email, live chat, and telephone support.  For an additional yearly rate, you can also get priority phone support.
• Mozy offers only email and live chat with the Home edition.  You have to purchase the Pro edition to get 24/7 technical support.

Reviews indicate that both have “average” customer support with the usual good/bad, high/low ratings that every company receives.

Here are some other factors that you might want to consider:

• Mozy backups your Outlook email.
• Carbonite only runs a backup on the computer where the application is installed.

About the only difference I could find – and it’s a small one – relates to performance.  Some folks have found that Carbonite seems to be slightly faster when scanning files, while Mozy requires some tweaking of the settings at the onset to achieve this same performance.

Briefly, if you have less than 2GB of files requiring storage, go with Mozy.  If you have more than 2GB, it’s really going to depend on which works best for you.  You can try them both free as well as find specials.  For me – I went with Carbonite and really like it.  I tried to upload my data with Mozy and it was locking my iMac up and taking entirely too long.