Backup unlimited data online and offsite for free using Zoogmo

Posted on December 21, 2007 at 6:21 am

Make sure to read other posts from the Backup Data series!

There are many services currently out there that you can use to backup your data online on a remote server securely, but they are usually not free. And if they are free, it’s usually only a few GB’s worth of free online data storage! If you’re looking for an easy way to backup your PC data securely and remotely offsite, there’s a really cool software application that allows you to backup unlimited data for free!

Zoogma, not the coolest name, is a peer-to-peer backup service that basically allows you to backup your computer to multiple remote locations for free. Here’s how it works: Install the software onto your computer and then choose which computers your want your data to be backed up to, it can be your own or other trusted computers, such a friends’ or family members’.

Zoogmo is a great idea: take all the spare disk space being wasted on people’s computers and use that for backups! It’s basically backups meeting social networking. Using your current Internet connection and a couple of computers running Zoogma, you can have a secure and reliable backup of all of your data in no time.

So the first thing you are probably thinking is “Well that’s great, but I don’t want my friends or anyone else to be able to access my data!”, which is a very valid concern. The people who wrote this software also thought the same and that’s why all data that is transferred from your computer is first encrypted, so only you can access your data.

The data is also transferred over the Internet in the encrypted format, so no one will be able to read it off the wire either. The encryption used is a combo of Triple-DES and AES 256-bit, so it would take many supercomputers and many years to actually crack this encryption.

Zoogma supports any computer running Windows XP or Windows 2003. The other computers need to have the Zoogma software installed and each partner can choose for themselves which drive they would like to use for storage of friends files, including USB flash drives and external hard drives.

Once you install Zoogma, it starts a scan of your computer to find the most commonly backed up items, such as word processing documents, spreadsheets, pictures and videos, IE and Firefox favorites, presentations, and lots more. This makes it very easy to begin backing up your important data, no need to click tons of check boxes or anything!

The data is backed up in the background automatically and once the initial backup is made, all of the rest are simply incremental, whenever changes are made. You don’t have to keep your computer on all the time, Zoogma will pickup when your computer is idle.

For restoring, simply install the program and choose Restore. Log into your account and Zoogma will find all of your backup partners. If anyone of them are offline, Zoogma will recover the data when they come back online. You can also do a selective restore.

Zoogma suggests that you have at least 3 backup partners, so that your data is replicated in multiple locations, making it even safer. Zoogma should be able to get through most firewalls and routers, but you may have trouble at a corporate office.

If you don’t have any friends or colleagues, go ahead and add your other computers as partners. So if you have a laptop and a desktop, make them partners and they will back each other up, better than nothing!

[tags]backup online, offsite backup, backup your data, backup data online, offsite data backup free, free remote data backup, how to backup data, free data backup[/tags]

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Comments

2 Responses to “Backup unlimited data online and offsite for free using Zoogmo”

Bilingual Blogger said on : December 23rd, 2007 at 2:40 am

There’s something about this idea that creeps me out. What happens if you have a falling out with one of your backup partners and they rig their computer so that it doesn’t respond to your request to access your info? What happens if another person’s computer’s hard drive goes down. Nah, this idea, while in theory, sounds great, in practice, I think has too many external variables to be wildly successful long-term. It would be ideal for let’s say a small business that has a couple of computers, but individuals using this between friends and family, forget it. Too much potential for problems. Let’s check back in 12 months and see how Zoogmo is doing. I’ll bet they don’t make it.

Dov Sugarman said on : January 5th, 2008 at 12:21 pm

Hi Aseem,
I am CEO of Zoogmo. Thanks for the nice coverage of Zoogmo.
I appreciate the point that Bilingual Blogger raises in their comment and would like to take this opportunity to respond.

With Zoogmo you build a backup network consisting of trusted friends and family members or even your own computers. Because real world relationships can go sour and hard drives can crash, Zoogmo is designed to create data redundancy. By inviting several partners into your backup network you assure that if something goes wrong with one of them, your data is still safe and available to you on the others’ computers. Zoogmo is powered by a smart algorithm that knows how to replicate and divide your data so it is backed up in the most efficient manner possible. With Zoogmo you wind up with multiple encrypted copies of your info automatically and securely spread across your personal backup network. Free, smart and friendly backup!