I store lots of photos, videos and music on my laptop and home computers and I've used Mozy for the past year to keep everything backed up in case of a disaster or data loss. I heard about a new competitor called ElephantDrive so I decided to give it a try, here's what I found:

Pros of ElephantDrive

Higher level of security. Both Mozy and ElephantDrive transfer your files over a secure SSL connection, but only ElephantDrive will pre-encrypt your files using the ultra-secure AES protocol, which is the same system used by some US government agencies to encrypt files. If you have very sensitive files or additional need for security, ElephantDrive has a much higher level of security.

Drag-and-drop files in Windows and Mac Finder. ElephantDrive has a nice feature called TrunkDrive which is a plug-in for Windows or Mac OSX Finder and turns your ElephantDrive remote drive into a virtual hard drive on your system, so you can easily drag and drop files to and from your remote drive, as if it were simply on your local hard drive.

Faster data transfers. ElephantDrive uses a proprietary communication network to transfer files, making file transfers very fast. I noticed at times transferring large video files happened faster on ElephantDrive than on Mozy.

• (click to see if ElephantDrive is still running their 2-months free offer)

Pros of Mozy

Free account option. Mozy offers a nice option which is free (no credit card required) for users who don't need more than 2GB of storage. Its nice to simply be able to download the application and start your backup without having to put in a credit card.

Incremental backups. After your initial download of files you want to backup, Mozy tracks only changes that were made and downloads only the differences in files. This saves bandwidth so that large files are not being backed up repeatedly all the time.

Bandwidth throttling. With Mozy you can select exactly how much bandwidth you want to allocate to backups. I've been annoyed in the past where videos you are streaming are interrupted or become stalled because a backup commences in the background, so the option to keep your backups limited to a certain amount of bandwidth is nice - you never notice its running.

High quality live telephone support. I've had to call into Mozy a couple of times with questions about my account and setup, and it was always easy to get a rep on the phone within minutes, Mozy customer support is really good from my experience, they are professional and courteous and my issues and questions have always been resolved quickly.

• (Click to check if Mozy is still offering their 10% off discount)

Overall I think ElephantDrive might be a better solution for small / independent businesses and those who need fast speed and tight integration with Windows or their Mac desktop. Mozy is still my top choice, however, for its bandwidth features and overall ease of use.

See a more detailed review of Mozy.