October 2008
My Experience with Mozy.com
This is Mozy: “Mozy is the industry-leading solution for online backup, remote backup, data backup, computer backup, backup software, internet backup, and remote office backup – back up your important files, photos, documents and more over the internet.”
So, now I need to let everyone know my experience with Mozy.com I also want to apologize in advance for poor grammar or rambling sentences.
I was looking for an online backup solution for my home computer. I am running Mac OS X Server 10.4 to help streamline backups for my home video files, My Document files and misc. other files. It has been much easier to have the 2 computers in our house connect to the one computer to access shared files since its on all the time.
Back in June 2008 I found Mozy.com from a Google search. After downloading the free trial, installing it, and using it for 15 or so day on my home server I though it would be perfect to backup all our files. I pre-paid for 2 years of unlimited backups. The idea of running backups off-site gave me piece of mind knowing that if anything every happened at home (flood, fire etc) our files, home video, photos would be safe. All was working perfectly and without issue.
About 20 days ago all backups stopped working with just a Connection Error 2 in the MozyHome software log. I tried several things to fix the issue all without success. This prompted me to contact Mozy Support.
Below are the conversations I had with Mozy Support:
On Oct 16, 2008, at 9:49 AM, Jarred S wrote:
I purchased Mozy Home for my backup needs in June 08. I have installed your software on my HOME computer and all was fine. Backups work and everything was running seamlessly. On your release on MozyPro my MozyHome software stopped functioning. I didn’t realize this until my hard drive failed and when I went to restore my daily backups I realized it wasn’t automatically backing up. After a sloooow restore process of my out of date Documents folder (which has issues) I am now trying to get Mozy functioning again.
My big issue is when upgrading my HOME computer to the most recent MozyHome software your company decided to decline me the update and backups due to me running Mac OS Server at HOME.
Please explain,
Jarred S
_______________________________________________
On Oct 16, 2008, at 9:47 PM, support@mozy.com wrote:
Hi there,
Go ahead and do a clean uninstall/reinstall of Mozy with the following version: https://mozy.com/downloads/mozy-1_1_2_1.dmg
1. Uninstall Mozy and say no to saving files.
2. Reboot your machine.
3. Delete any remaining Mozy files from ./Library/Application\ Support/Mozy.
4. Reinstall Mozy with the version found at the above link.
Please let me know how this goes.
Thank You!
Angie G
Mozy Technical Support
http://mozy.com/feedback/angie
_______________________________________________
On Oct 17, 2008, at 12:32 PM, Jarred S wrote:
Uninstalled everything and when re-installing the install program says the same thing.
When I get to the part of the install where it asks to select a destination my hard drive (OS) has a red exclamation over with a now that says:
“You can not install Mozy on this volume. We’re sorry, Mozy Home has been disabled for Mac OS X Server. Please upgrade to MozyPro.”
Help…It has been weeks and weeks since i’ve backup up because of this..Jarred
_______________________________________________
On Oct 17, 2008, at 4:48 PM, support@mozy.com wrote:
Hi there,
I apologize, MozyHome no longer supports servers or mapped/networked drives. This is due to the release of the MozyPro product for Mac. If you’d like to upgrade you can give our sales team a call at 1-877-MOZYPRO.
Thank You!
Angie G
Mozy Technical Support
http://mozy.com/feedback/angie
_______________________________________________
Now, I don’t believe in getting something for nothing but at the time of my purchase, Mozy had no product called MozyPro for Mac. MozyHome was the only product and it was functioning on the Mac Server perfectly until they physically turned it off upon completion of MozyPro (beta). Also, when purchasing MozyHome they gave no indication or disclaimer that they would not support Mac 10.4 Server for MozyHome in the near future.
I think what I’m most upset with is a company not honoring an existing customers purchase. If they never intended to have MozyHome support for Mac 10.4 Server then they should have been very clear about it. Today, if you look at the requirements of MozyHome it states support for Mac OS 10.4 – 10.5. I’m not storing any business data on this and all my home stuff is non-commercial. No other mention that “oh, by the way, 10.4 (server) may work now but it is NOT supported and will NOT function in the near future.
Maybe i’m wrong or maybe I don’t understand the business / customer relationship but I kind of feel cheated by them. This has lead me to one solution, cancel the service and continue my search for a bigger better online backup company.
I have yet to hear back from Mozy as to that request. All I can say is they best refund my un-used 620 days. I will post more when I find out what has happened. Sigh..
UPDATE: October 27th 2008
I wanted to update my continued experience with Mozy.
I have been in contact with Mozy support regarding my situation. It seems that the new guidelines now that MozyPro Mac are out there is some confusion as to when the Mac Server support if using MozyHome is to be turned off. Below are other conversations I’ve had with support at Mozy:
_______________________________________________
On Oct 21, 2008, at 3:45 PM, support@mozy.com wrote:
I spoke with our development staff on this issue. There was a change that was supposed to occur for MozyHome users with Mac OSX server, but those changes should not have been implemented yet. If you were running into problems, then there may be another issue happening there. Do you still have the Mozy log file in /Library/Logs ?
I’ve gone ahead and refunded the charge on your account, let me know if there is anything that I can do for you, or a number at which I can contact you.
Sincerely, Kevin
Mozy Support
_______________________________________________
On Oct 21, 2008, at 3:54 PM, Jarred Stanley wrote:
Hi Kevin,
Unfortunately, another member of your support staff had me delete / uninstall it all (including Logs) to re-install the new version..which failed to install on my computer. See messages below back and forth over 2 days.
_______________________________________________
I think what I have learned thru all this is although the idea of a remote backup using Mozy or other online backup companies sounds like a good idea it in the end is not effective considering the time involved in actually making the backups and restores. Mozy software has an upload cap on the software at 1024k per second. So, even though I have upload speeds of 6000k Check yours at (http://www.speedtest.net) they still will throttle your backups to 1024k or less in my case. I averaged around 500k. The other rather large factor is each block of data (not sure how it is determined) is evaluated first. This process is time consuming and can fail which will stop the entire backup from occurring. I believe it has something to do with the encryption process and compression. Still very very slow.
The restore of Mozy is also slow and has other major issues. I initiated a restore of my entire MY Documents folder (41GB). I first attempted to use the software which never respond or showed progress once I selected the folder to restore and clicked restore. Since I needed these files I logged in to my Mozy account and initiated a restore using the web site. Pretty simple process. Since I had no prior experience restoring a large folder with Mozy I really didn’t know what to expect. The preparation process of Mozy building the restore folder for me to download took some time. 2-3 days.
First issue:
They apparently can not give you they restored files in the same folder structure your backed up in using the web version restore. The My Documents folder containing 50-100 subfolders within subfolders restored as 16 different dmg download disks. After downloading each of the 1.5GB files at 370k per second (another cap set by Mozy since my average download speed is 20,000k) which took another 2 days I had to spend several hours sorting the files into one folder structure system.
Second issue:
Meta data has become a very important part of our files today. Using the web restore strips this data from ALL files. On the surface, creation date, modified data..all set to the restore date. Not good!
I’m sure Mozy has workarounds for all this i’ve talked about but the issue is, as with all hardware and software companies, support should not be very slow to respond to a customers data crisis needs. If a customers hard drive fails they usually need it back asap. Not a week later with issues. State warnings as to lost meta info using web restores, backing up folders larger than 1.5GB will be dismantled to conform and “actual” time to restore large folders. If we all know ahead of time we won’t be so shocked.
So, what I have learned from all this. If you have more than 2 GB of data it is best to backup your data yourself using removable hard drives. What ever your backup needs are today, double or triple it when purchasing a backup removable hard drive. If you can afford it, buy 2 and use one as a monthly backup you keep at your friends house or parents in my case. If your main hard drive fails the restore will be very quick and lost time at a minimum.
I hope this was helpful
