Comments on: Everybody likes Mozy--except me, Part 1

Online off-site backups are a good thing. Mozy may not be your best choice, however. Part 1 of two blog posts.

[bethinoklahoma]

I tried mozy free and it seem very slow taking about 5 hours up upload about 900M worth of data. I came across a very cheap rsync product on onlinestoragesolution.com that seems better because it only took about 3 hours to upload the 900M. The cost was more than mozy free at $5 per year but using rsync allow you to restore files anytime you want without waiting. That + Speed makes it worth the money.

[Alex_mdt]

Never used Mozy, but I've been using Altexa.com for over 2 years now and I have been a very satisfied customer. The initial backup took a while, but since then I don't even see the program running so it doesn't bother me that it's always on.

Altexa don't have a huge coverage such as Mozy although they deserve some, ince their product is really good.
(www.altexa.com)

[acgrun]

Use under link to sign up
https://mozy.com/?code=MGQ9HM

We can get another 0.5GB free space.

[Ben_Fiedler]

Mozy is an upsell rip

Signed-up for Mozy a few months ago - and then my hard drive got wiped.

I signed-on to restore files to my hard drive...Wouldn't you know it? They tell you online that if you don't pay $49.95 to get a FedEx overnight of your files that you could wait a VERY long time to be able to restore.

I'm going to try a different service once I'm restored.

This is very frustrating.

[Ben_Fiedler]

Update - it will take about 14 hours to download a 7.5 GB restore.

Mozy is total hype - look for something different.

[schneiderjo_dotmac]

Has anybody experience with the service SpiderOak - it seems to do incremental backups. The frontend is java, so it is not so convenient for a mac user. But at first sight the terms oft their service look good to me.

[lmerylr]

Mozy was disastrous for me. I had to get a new MacBook when my old one died suddenly. I had been under the impression that I could download all my old stuff for free, but actually it seems like the only way to get your data in a usual form is by paying over $80 for your data on CD. I decided to attempt to get everything through free download and it was a complete mess. Everything downloaded in little bits with long code numbers - completely disorganized and I was still missing a bunch of stuff after I spent hours opening unknown files. I did manage to recover most of my old files but the process was extremely time-consuming and frustrating. I am extremely unimpressed.

[lmerylr]

Mozy was disastrous for me. I had to get a new MacBook when my old one died suddenly. I had been under the impression that I could download all my old stuff for free, but actually it seems like the only way to get your data in a usual form is by paying over $80 for your data on CD. I decided to attempt to get everything through free download and it was a complete mess. Everything downloaded in little bits with long code numbers - completely disorganized and I was still missing a bunch of stuff after I spent hours opening unknown files. I did manage to recover most of my old files but the process was extremely time-consuming and frustrating. I am extremely unimpressed.

[mummylord]

Just uninstalled mozy after my
latency's jumped from 100ms
to 500ms while online. I have never
seen this before and now can't improve
my speed. I'm afraid mozy installed
something that's still running
and eating up my bandwidth

[Gurgle]

I agree. I heard all this great stuff about mozy, but it isn't a backup service.

I've tried both Mozy and IDrive (and Dell Datasafe, which isn't worth using even if they paid you).

Mozy:

Upload Speeds: Slower initial upload (much)
Incremental Upload Speeds: Really Fast

Support: Good and effective

Backup Policy: The worst. The 30 day life time for files "marked for deletion" (their way of saying accidentally deleted and not noticed) is like having no back up at all. I don't check my 5000 photos every month.

IDrive:

Upload Speeds: Fast initial upload

Incremental Upload Speeds: I think they are lying about block level incremental. Takes just as long as the original large file or PST, but at least the bandwidth is there.

Support: Sucks. No release notes between versions (so you have no idea what was fixed). And their answers sometimes leave you wondering if they even read the question or care at all (bet it is outsourced).

Backup Policy: Very Good. Awesome in fact. The one real features that keeps me there. 150GB, no deletion of files. If you WANT to delete the files, you can synch your hard drive to the online sets to remove those files, or delete specific online backups and keep the others. The real purpose of a backup.

[rickieb_newyork]

Mozy is a disaster!!
This is my experience:
- It worked as it should for a few days. Then it started identifying large amounts of data that needed to be backed up which made no sense since I hadn't added that much data - I mean 120GBs or 67GBs. It's just impossible that I added that much data.
- At the end of every back up it would get to 100%, stay there for 24 hours and then say "connection lost". EVERY TIME
- The support is DREADFUL. You'll be better off asking a brick for assistance. You detail the problem, they repeat it back to you and then ask you for more details that you've already submitted.
- I called their headoffice...spoke to 2nd level support who was more helpful but ultimately the product just doesn't work as the problems have persisted
- They automatically renew your contract. You contact them to cancel this. Guess what....no response! Yes, they don't respond to you when you say you don't want their ineffective service.
- I tried to excuse Mozy by trying yo reconfig the set up so that it wouldn't have to think about what its doing. The software crashed.
- Oh...by the way, my case number is UHC-643999. I've seen people who have blogs who have got responses from Mozy. I paid for a year so why not give this a try...nothing else worked.
- I ended up buying a new Lacie hard drive. It gives you a year of free Carbonite back up. I'll be going with that and asking Amex to refund the money I've wasted on Mozy.
Final conclusion of this Mozy Review
AVOID IT LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!!

[zwr2009]

A very nice application <a href="http://www.datanumen.com/aor/ ">Advanced Outlook Repair</a> is also avariable. It is a powerful tool to recover messages, folders and other objects from corrupt or damaged Microsoft Outlook PST files.

[gregswillis]

I have been running Mozy for about a month now. I have 350 GB of data that I am backing up and it has not finished the initial backup, but I am not worried. I am not using Mozy as my only backup. I have an internal drive I backup to every night using Microsoft Synctoy and a Seagate FreeAgent external drive that is backed up to using the Seagate software. If I leave my house for a day or more, I take the external with me. I am only using Mozy as extra insurance. If my house burns down or gets wiped out by a tornado, I believe I will be able to recover my files form Mozy. I would not use any online backup service as my only backup, that would be foolish.

[jdereg]

It all comes down to price for me. Services like Mozy, charge you 1 subscription per computer. With http://www.MyOtherDrive.com you can have several subscriptions per computer making it much less expensive.

[SomeGuyinWY]

I'm considering an online backup solution, and having read this post, I know I'm not going to go with Mozy. One item that Mr. Horowitz brought up is the security aspect of things. This raises the biggest question I have had about online backups in general: who actually owns these operations? With that, more questions come; how secure is my stuff? who else besides me has access to it? how safe is it? I, like many people would use an online service, (in addition to having multiple backup devices, including external hard drives, a server, and utilizing DVD storage for transport to an off-site location), with the intention of having an extra off-site option; all I want to know is the answers to these questions.

[datarecovery1]

I completely agree. I don't think Mozy is worth it. I've had my computer destroyed (like in theircommercials), but I only dropped it. I spent a little more then a hundred bucks to http://www.datarecoverygroup.com and they recovered all my lost files in two days. I would rather pay to have that stuff recovered then pay a monthly fee.

[GaryoftheDesert]

I signed up for Mozy in June and started backing up about 20GB of data. The backup moved along quickly at first but when it got around to backing up Outlook, with about 3.5GB left to go, the problems began. Backups stopped for no apparent reason, necessitating starting from scratch. Customer support tried to help, but meanwhile my IP was charging me ($75 so far) for exceeding my data transfer allowance, which Mozy refused to reimburse me for. Last weekend, after turning off Outlook,letting the backup run for over three days (and more than three months after I started backing my data up to Mozy), it looked as if I was finally finished. I was wrong. The backup, even though it said the data was 100% transferred, had failed again and the fix Mozy suggested was incredibly complicated. I finally canceled the service and was told Mozy would refund the monthly charges I have already paid them. I also requested, again, to be reimbursed for what my IP has charged me for the data transfer and by all rights they should do so. I am glad to be rid of Mozy and its endless failed backups and have gone back to using an external hard drive for my backups.

[arise86]

Well here's the deal... after reading everything for and against, I decided to go with Mozy after all. Signed up for 2 years the other day - before I found out you can get a 15% discount! So I made a website to help other people take advantage of the savings available. It's called Mozy Code (www.mozycode.com) - hopefully this will help you.

Disclaimer: Yes, if you check this page, and use the Coupon Code, it will save you 15% - and yes, it does have affiliate codes on there which means it doesn't cost you anything extra, but it will help raise a little money to cover the cost of the site.

So that's the deal, check out www.mozycode.com

[ChiliPepr]

Use the following link to get 256 Mb more space on a free Mozy Home 2 Gb account:

https://mozy.com/?code=D685JF