Will Mozy back up my external hard drive?

Posted by Caitlin on April 13th, 2009

The following post in our Reader Question series is an actual user submitted question. To maintain the integrity of the original question, we do not edit or change reader questions in any way.

Q: Will Mozy, or any of the online backup offerings, allow me to back up my external drive along with my desktop drive? Thanks.

A: Yes, they will. Mozy can backup any drive that Windows recognizes as "fixed." Operating systems consider hard drives "fixed," regardless of whether they are internal or external. DVD/CD-ROMs, media cards and some thumb or flash drives are not considered "fixed," and cannot be backed up.

You can tell if your drive is "fixed" by doing the following: Click Start Menu, then click My Computer. "Fixed" drives appear under Hard Disk Drives, while unfixed drives appear under Devices with Removable Storage. If you do not see these sections, click View > Arrange Icons by > Show in Groups. If your external drive is not "fixed," first copy the data onto one of your "fixed" drives, then select the data for back up.

To learn more about Mozy or other online backup services, see our reviews and comparison chart.

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