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Desktop alternatives to MegauploadThe problem
The more digital content we store on our computers, the more important reliable backup solutions become. For example, my iMac has about 50GB of music and photos on its primary disk drive. While much of the music could probably be replaced, any photo not yet uploaded to Flickr would be lost forever if that disk failed. So, like many other Mac users, I use Time Machine to maintain a secure copy of all my files, albeit on a potentially unstable portable hard disk in the same room as my Mac.
It was this potential unreliability of my Time Machine disk that got me interested in online backup options. What could be better than being able to backup to a remote server, safe in the knowledge that should any disaster befall my Time Machine disk, everything would still be OK. At least, that was the theory.
Solution found!
After some research and a little help from OnSoftware, I settled on Mozy for Mac - generally regarded as being a great online backup tool. I signed up for the $4.95/month unlimited backup plan: I thought (and still think) that $5 a month is a pretty good price point for total peace of mind. After setting up my account - a really simple process - and installing the Mozy desktop client - also a breeze - I let Mozy get to work on its initial backup. It was about eight hours after this that I spotted the main flaw in Mozy's design: you have to complete an entire backup in one go right at the beginning, without any interruptions whatsoever. You can't go restarting your Mac (not that I did), and you can't lose connectivity for even a short time, which seems to have happened to me.
Around this time, my Mac was acting a little weird. I'd narrowed the problem down to a graphics driver error, but the truth is that my Mac was freezing from time to time. This meant that every time the driver error reared its ugly exception, I'd have to start from scratch on the Mozy backup. That's not Mozy's fault, nor is the occasional eccentricity of my ADSL connection. But Mozy could come up with a way of resuming backups, even for the initial backup process.
In order to be fair, I tried running Mozy after I'd fixed the driver issue and done a clean install, to see if it performed better under optimal conditions. Left overnight, I expected Mozy to be up to about 25% when I checked it in the morning. Unfortunately, Mozy had failed for some unknown reason at some point during the evening... all I could do was start it again. Then it failed again during the day. So I canceled my account, disappointed by a product that I'd been planning on loving.
Two things Mozy could do to win me back
Find a way of resuming backups. When backing up 100GB of data, it's just ridiculous that an interruption causes the whole process to be canceled. Building a decent file index at the beginning of the backup operation should allow for Mozy to pick up where it left off, and then look for changes after the initial backup is complete.
Clearer error messages. One of the biggest problems I found was that when Mozy's backup process failed, the information available about what had happened was very limited. More information, on the web side of the user interface, if necessary, would make it easier to diagnose and fix problems preventing the backup from working properly.
You're very lucky. At least you gave up on Mozy early on. I relied on Mozy for 2 years. Now that I need to restore my files, every restore is corrupted. Mozy has acknowledged that the problem is on their end. It has been 25 days now that I'm waiting for a restore without corruption.
I've been doing incremental back ups with mozy for ages, pausing them, starting again etc, on my Macbook, and it seems fine. Never tried to restore anything, but certainly it seems to be all there! So I'm happy Have you decided what to use instead? Jungle disc has good reviews... and can you use dropbox as a back up solution?
p.s. this is interesting comparison: http://www.macworld.com/article/142606/2009/09/online_backup.html
@1mikevdm - Thanks for the info. Is this a common problem? @Ben - OK well that's definitely a better experience. I wonder if you should try to restore and see what happens? Don't want to mess your computer up though! And thanks for that comparison post.
Tom, I don't know if it's common, but they told me that there is one other customer with the same problem. Assuming that most people don't restore just to test, I would speculate that there are more bad accounts. Even then, once you restore, most don't actually TEST the restored data. I used winmerge (http://winmerge.org/) to compare my current data to restored data. That's how I found the problem. They refunded the DVDs I ordered and about 1 year's worth. Overall, reliable backup, yes. Restore? Not so much.
Have you tried any of the other online backup solutions similar to Mozy? Backblaze is one example. I would interested to see a comparison between the programs. It would also be nice to find out the reasoning behind choosing Mozy over the other programs/services in this arena.
Any chance MozyPro would be any better? I suspect not, but what business-grade data backup solutions exist for macs?
I've had pretty bad experiences with Mozy myself lately. I use it for my mac as well and have been dealing with it freezing up etc. I was just told by the latest contact from their tech support (which is a total joke) that there is a problem with the latest version of the mac client. You can read about the whole ordeal here if you like: http://stuffwetried.com/website-internet-product-reviews/mozy-backup-review-i-take-back-anything-good-i-ever-said
Check out CloudBerry Backup (http://cloudberrylab.com), it works on top of Amazon S3 and with your Amazon S3 account. Even if CloudBerry screw up you will still be able to get your data from S3.
@Andy - is there a Mac version of CloudBerry Backup available? I can only see Windows and Linux editions...
I had this problem with Mozy before and i found it very hard to restore all my data.
Sorry to hear that Mozy isn't working for you; as a Mac user, you should check out Backblaze. As noted by 1mikevdm, backups are useless unless you can restore from them. I spot-check my backups regularly, restoring a file & making sure it's reliable.
[...] Review: Mozy Online Backup for Mac disappoints (onsoftware.en.softonic.com) [...]
Not sure why you can't interrupt your backup if you were using it when this post was dated. Backup interruption is fully supported from Mozy - I've been doing mine in chunks over the course of a month with no problems using Snow Leopard. I know that doesn't help you, but I think it's important for me to report it.
found this coupon https://mozy.com/?code=KMLYU7 you get extra 512 MB free (checked, it works!)
I had a horrible experience with Mozy as well. From the customer service to the fact that none of my Excel files were ever backed-up. I found out too late to save years of my work. I immediately cancelled my Mozy account and now do my own physical back-ups. I should have known better than to trust an online back-up service. I learned a valuable (and costly) lesson. Do yourself a favor and don't use Mozy!
Thanks for your post on Mozy. We actually do resume the backup at the last file where it left off, but our UI needs an update to show this. To the customer, it does look as though Mozy is starting all all over again. This is being updated now. Also, we're working to clear up error code messages. Send me an e-mail directly and I'll fill you in. Devin Knighton devin@mozy.com www.mozy.com January 11, 2010 4:35 PM
I've tried Mozy and several others and ended up settling on Tomahawk (http://www.tomahawkbackup.com/). It's not the cheapest but I got tired of spending precious time dinking around with crap. The money you save with the "cheap" services is spent in time troubleshooting and on the phone with customer support (for me anyway). I'd rather just buy something that friggin works. Also Tomahawk gives you the option to backup off-site and to a USB/network drive simultaneously, so other than a total catastrophe, I will always have a local backup. Working well so far and I don't have to think about it much. I also like using SugarSync for syncing files among computers which works relatively well, but Tomahawk is my disaster recovery.
Gah! Just had this very same problem. My brother recommended Mozy and since I'm not very techy and just have a few photos and bit of music, all I had to back up was a measly 25GB and for the last week, I've been trying to get the initial back up done - it's stopped and restarted about 8 times with absolutely no end in sight. The website support s useless as well - I even tried to get an answer on Twitter to no avail. Such a joke, I've asked for a refund - that part at least seems to be done well going by other commenters in various forums. Guess I'm glad I'm figuring out how crap it is now, not when I need to restore.
It is good to hear this about Mozy.i prefer using an online backup solution called Safecopy backup.Mozy gives me a problem mainly if am backing up large files.It becomes too slow.Safecopy is so compatible with both my Mac and Win computers.And if i delete anything accidentally,i can recover them back by just a few clicks because they keep deleted files forever.
I made a big mistake and relied on Mozy. I don't know if Restore is crappy or main backup program itself. Seemed quite simple to use and spoke of easy restore etc. Suddenly one day - I saw all my files have gone corrupt or started to give "Access Denied" errors when I tried to use them in Word or Excel or adobe etc. . No amount of restoring back to any day would fix it. I had even bought a few licenses for my customers investing about 250$ or so. Now, Im struggling to recover my data, forget giving this to my customers. I desperately need help and support from Mozy - has someone seen this error and any solution - can someone point me to someone at Mozy who actually helped?