need cloud backup for your mac? Choose Jungle Disc!

After switching to a Mac I started looking for cloud backup services to protect my investment and all of my personal gigs of photos, movies, music, CODE, and tons of other items in the bucket. Just like having a safety deposit box or home safe, I felt that in addition to onsite backup, just like servers in a corporate data center, backing up to the cloud was an excellent idea. While backing up to the cloud isn't new, I was having one hell of time locating an excellent product for my Mac. Than by a stroke of luck I stumbled across Mozy. At first everything with Mozy seemed to work very well, the UI was not the best, however, it got the job done. At least I thought it did. Then one day I started getting a bunch of errors after I migrated a few folders to different directories within my profile folder which should have been no big deal. Just re-map file pointers? I was extremely nervous to say the least. After a few hopeless exchanges via their support email address I decided to jump ship. At first, I was at a loss for other options that were more than just Mac ports, but excellent working apps. I wanted something that not only worked on a Mac, but had the same user experience that well written Mac Apps have. Then a peep of mine Shannon Hicks recommended trying out Jungle Disc. At first I was skeptical, but I have to say, I highly recommend this product. For the purposes of this review I would like to highlight what I like about Jungle Disc versus Mozy.

The first huge differenece between Mozy and Jungle Disc is that Jungle Disc utilizes Amazon.com's S3 Storage Service, while Mozy has its own servers. This can be debated either way, however, I have found working directly with my Amazon Web Services account much easier to manage. You can also sign up for Jungle Disk Plus, which for an extra buck per month, adds Web-Based access to your files, block-level updates, and Upload resume.

Not to sound to negative, I do have one postive about Mozy. I really liked the system tray icon. It displayed your current back up progress and you could access various configuration options all through this interface. While this is not terribly important, it was very useful and could be an excellent addition to a future release of Jungle Disc.

Lets start with the config UIs. As you can see from the screen shot below the UI utilized to setup your backup files in Mozy was pretty basic and even the advanced menu did not have too many options. I found it cumbersome, slow, and very confusing to see exactly what you were backing up. It also took forever communicating with the Mozy servers.

On the other hand the Jungle Disc UI was really easy and intuitive to configure. You can configure an assortment of options such as your bucket security, scheduled backups, and manual jobs. The app itself can be configured to require a password to start as well. Currently on my configuration I require a password to startup the application and high security on each of the buckets I use. Unlike requiring high security on Mozy which appears to slow down the app, high security in Jungle Disc did not appear to impede performance.

When performing your backup the output is clear and concise. You can see in real time each file being pushed up to the cloud and any errors that occur during the transition in the "Errors & Warnings" window. While I do have a high speed connection averaging around 3mbs static on a DSL, I did not experience a drastic slow down on my home network like when Mozy basically clogged the pipe. The progress screen is well laid out, however, it would be nice to have the option to configure it as a service where it could run in the background.

Overall. I have been truely pleased with every aspect of the Jungle Disc product. It is very affordable, configurable, and most of all easy to use. Aslo, one key for me is where to go for help and documentation. Check out the Jungle Disc Support Options. The have a detailed knowledge base, user guides, answers to common questions and most of all forums. I have used the forums and Jungle Disc admins reply quickly to your questions.

End your search and switch to Jungle Disc today.