Maybe I won't jump if a Mac client becomes available.

/hug

Dude, that really sucks. In the future, given how cheap disks are, you might want to consider either RAID 1, 10 or 5 to have some protection against a "simple" disk failure. Save the off-site restore for a true disaster that destroys the entire house...

The other thing to consider for off-site storage is to backup your data to a friend in another location (the farther away the better). If you split the cost of the disks and your friend can backup to you, then you each have off-site backup. If a true disaster does happen, then dealing with your friend will be easier than a commercial site. Hopefully you could buy a 300 GB drive for your friend to copy the files onto and fedex over... that'd be faster than downloading it all at once.

Check out FolderShare -- it's a p2p file synch service that Microsoft bought a couple years ago. It securely synchs your files to another device -- you could partner up with a friend as before and synch to each other easily and securely.

Backing up your life to a server on the internet is a bad idea. Film at 11.

How this ends up. I use Mozy too and don't want to be caught off guard.

The files themselves are fine, so at least I haven't lost my data permanently. The problem is just that I have to spend hours manually picking through them and yelling at Mozy until it restores the ones that haven't been restored yet.

We've tried Mozy on Vista and had lots of trouble and finally gave up after some back and forth with their technical support people.

We're waiting anxiously for DataDepositBox to support Vista (they say it is coming soon). They are _slightly_ more expensive than Mozy but they work so smoothly on XP that we hope it will be good on Vista too. DataDepositBox also doesn't hog the CPU the way Mozy does and its restore functionality is great (instant restore of any file/folder, anytime, as often as you want).

Thanks for the post. I just had my hard drive crash and I'm trying the web restore, too. I can't even see my files on the Mozy servers yet. It tells me I have 52.6 GB stored, but when I go to retrieve the files, the browser just sits there telling me it's loading. This goes on for 6-12 hours. I've never been able to see any of my files or backup sets. I'm in contact with their tech support by email, but they haven't been able to really help yet. All they did was to tell me it takes a while.

After posting that comment, I tried Firefox to get at my files instead of IE 7. I was able to access them in less than a minute. My backup set is being prepared right now. I don't want anyone to get the impression that Mozy doesn't work.

My experience started out like yours, but has gone downhill ever since. I have been trying to restore ~70GB of files since June 21 with painful and limited success. I finally gave up and requested DVDs on July 3, it is now July 15 and I don't think that I will ever see them despite the fact that they promptly charged my credit card on July 3. I write calm reasonable e-mails but never receive a response except from the lowest echelon who tells me that they have passed my information along. All I can say is that if you are counting on Mozy to protect a large number of files against major system failure, then perhaps you should keep looking. Perhaps you could pass my message along to Dave Robinson because no one ever contacts me (of course I don't have a widely-read blog). Sigh...

I'm sorry for all of you who have had trouble with Mozy. We are working very hard to make the changes that you and other users and potential users are recommending. For example, we're reworking the restore system, which should be available within a few months. We've also increased the size of our support team by over double to handle increased requests for help due to drastic increases in the number of Mozy users. This essentially means that you should be able to get the help you need by emailing us at support@mozy.com if the system doesn't work as trouble free for you as it does for the vast majority of our users. (We also offer live chat support for paid subscriptions and phone support for Mozy Pro (business) users (www.mozypro.com).)

I've looked into the DVD restore, (right before I started writing this post) and the DVD restore started burning a little before I started writing. It should be shipped later today. I or someone in our organization will be emailing you later today with confirmation that the DVD's are burning and/or were shipped.

We recognize that your data is important to all of you, which is why we do everything we can to protect it and provide you a simple, yet comprehensive solution for backing it up and getting it back. If there is some sort of problem or failing in Mozy, I'm keenly interested in knowing about it so that we can address it. Concerns about support can also be put through directly to me. I really want to be your ally and friend in protecting your data. Email me at chuck@mozy.com with your concerns and I'll be happy to address them.

Thanks,
Chuck Wood
Lead Engineer
Mozy Support

At first glance, looks like a nice product. However, my own tests with restore support the premise that the product is not ready for prime time

For over 40 days, I've been trying to get help restoring my 31 GB of data. Each time, they tell me that there is some known bug, and it will be solved soon... but that is not good enough for a data backup service. (details... http://gawkysblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/tech-tips-problems-with-mozy-restore.html)

Good idea, but the implementation falls a bit short at present.

....and that's where Mozy sucks. I've waited over 12 hours for thew download link for a package of about 800 MB - a fraction of what I need to restore. I'm still waiting.....DO NOT RELY ON THIS SERVICE, no matter how enticing the backup process appears to be.

My home server also crashed with 94.2 GB backed up to Mozy. I have been waiting for over 15 days for a 29.2 GB partial restore since the Mozy website wouldn't allow me to request a full restore.

Mozy is a great idea, their operation isn't ready for prime time though. I am sending the drive off to have the data extracted. It will cost a ton more, but at least I'll have the data again- and it will probably be completed before Mozy gets a restore done.

this is not good news. im trying desperately to restore 34gb. I have had many problems actually getting the files to 'build' for 3 days. amongst other things apparently the 'build' request doesnt work with IE, need to use another browser... is that in their FAQ's? no. I had to wait 2 whole days for that bit of prize information. In the end when i got it going on mozilla... the download fails. Then, with help of their online support (they ended up requesting the build for me from their devt team due to a technical problem) I was delighted when my files actually became available for download. light was indeed at the end of the tunnel... NOPE. The files wont run!!! aaaaahhh xxx.exe is not a supported archive!! funny thing.. its saturday now and i cant speak to anybody until monday. tearing my hair out. Dont use mozy is my advice.

if anybody knows how to fix the unsupported archive problem... im all ears. would be grateful.

Allthough not a shareware, but so much better!

• After 10 days I am still waiting for my web restore build to finish.
• The Mac client restore is useless with download speeds around 50 kbs and no ability to resume after network hiccups.
• My support requests are ignored after the initial stupid "try the latest version of the client" answer.

I am giving up. No more mozy for me. Ever.

Been waiting over 50 days for a restore to build (30 BG) and still nothing. Their tech support is beyond worthless. I've talked with the president of the company and all he knows to do is get someone else involved that is clueless... Looks like the problem stems from the top.

Thanks for the info everyone. I just bought an account with Mozy but decided to cancel it after reading all of these nasty experiences.

I was seriously considering signing up w/Mozy.... but no way in Hell could I tolerate the problems (including THOSE MOST RECENT) I've read of here!

I had the Mozy set up to autoback up my MacBook (2 gb RAM) at 3am. The stupid Mozy program kept trying to backup at all times of day while I was using it. I double checked the settings several time. Mozy takes up SO much RAM when it's backing up (why? i have no clue) that it pretty much locked up my computer... always when I was very busy using it. It's off my MacBook for good. If you can't even get that right, I'm sure it'd screw up if I ever needed my data. I'll stick to an external drive and "time machine" when 10.5 comes out. Mozy sucks!

Luckily I have not had to rely on a restore yet. However, I have had similar support issues recently. I decided to upgrade from a 1.6 (or earlier?) version of the client to 1.8.6.8 because of beta EFS support.

Bad idea--I couldn't even backup or configure the options because the client kept crashing. The windows service would blow up too. I asked support for an earlier version of their client multiple times, but the request was ignored. I went back and forth with mozy support via email, and I was ultimately instructed to delete my computer account from their system because the client thought I was trying to backup more computers than I had paid for. Step number three of a six step process insured me that my data would not be lost and would be re-associated with my machine when I reconnected. There were new client errors after this.

Long story short, I finally got the 1.8.6.8 client to reconnect three days later using some kluge steps where I have to stop/start the services while a particular error message is displayed and active. However, my data was not re-associated as promised and a new initial backup was started. This took roughly nine days to complete (28 GB), so if something would have happened, I would have been screwed. Maybe this re-association problem could have been avoided if it didn't take so long to troubleshoot via email--or if a stable client had been released to the public in the first place? I was given a number to call if I was unhappy with this solution, or if it didn't work.

I noticed that there is now a new client version available. I am leery of upgrading again even though I still get error messages with this client version (1.8.6.8). I am very unhappy with mozy. Their support is lacking. It also appears the user base is left to test buggy code without any explanation of risk. Regrettably, I have recommended them to family and friends. When/if they have problems I will have to begin my apologies. I had an unsatisfactory support experience and an unsatisfactory software client experience. My data is backing up as promised, but that is only one half of a disaster plan...

I just tried my 1st restore on a 1.5gb file, took nearly all day, and about 15 restarts, tried both the windows client and web restore. I really REALLY want to like this service, but I'm concerned that 6months after these posts, something as simple as an http download fails over and over again...

Mozy is terrible.

Almost a week now trying to get my restore. Initially there were no restore files because their system hung, now the files are available and they repeatedly crash my computer running XP.

Mozy is virtually non-responsive except to tell me that I am not being "professional" when I told them their "service sucks" (on day 4). Emails telling them I am still having problems are simply ignored.

My advice: Do NOT under any circumstances use Mozy. A backup is a backup when it has been tested and succesfully restored in rapid time. Mozy absolutely fails to meet this standard. I have no files, no restore.

I have given up...................except that I will let as many people know about this experience as possible. Companies like this should not be in business.

I am a paying customer who experienced a hard drive failure. I requested and downloaded the restore files. First, it was a real pain to manually pick through the restores to replace my files. Second but most unfortunately, the restores did not include any php or html files, of which I had thousands.

Here is the last response that I received from Mozy on 1/16/08 AM and the reason why I am canceling my account today:

"I apologize. I will be out of the office until the 19th. You are welcome to log onto Mozy.com/pro and try our Chat Live support.

Thanks, Matt B, Mozy Support: http://mozy.com/feedback/matt"

Customer Service Problems at Mozy have reached critical mass. They don't respond to users at all now. (one week and I've stopped counting). I got a "client error II"; filled out the tech service report and emailed it to Mosy's "junk email folder" (I can only assume). I've sent two "what's up" emails over the last week, and am convinced that Mozy is missing in action. To be fair; there billing office is still going strong. They didn't wast any time billing my credit card for their "non service".

Don't use this product. I've been working with Chuck, David, Janell and David at Mozy since May of 2007 to restore files and I just received word today that they will not be able to restore my files. How terrible is a product that they developers can't get it to work correctly? This company should close their doors. I have countless emails from their "support" guys telling me they are close to fixing the issue. Then I get emails that a restore has been completed and deleted with no communication. This is the worst bit of customer service ever.

Was thinking of migrating away from my old, trusty "Connected Online Backup" solution now owned by Iron Mountain which I've been paying $16.45/month just for a mere 4GB over the past 8+ years. Mozy's solution looked too good to be true -- $4.95/mo for unlimited storage, and a more modern-looking interface. My initial backup of 1.8GB has not successfully completed once yet. The Mozy client either hangs, blows-up (taking down the XP MozyHome service), or renders any one of a half dozen other cryptic errors.

Contact to tech support has been underwhelming so far. Other than "were sorry for the problems, blah, blah, blah", and that's even after I sent the DMP and LOG files for troubleshooting. Still awaiting back from the latest volley, but so far I'm not impressed. I almost signed up for the 2-Year unlimited package and am soooo glad I resisted! (BTW, the stated policy on their web site is NO REFUNDS -- buyer beware!)

At the best I can only envision this software giving you a false sense of security. For a disaster backup there's no worse sin! Guess the saying "you get what you pay for" is never more true. Looks like I'll probably stick with the ~$17/mo service from an established company (Connected.com) that's not once let me down, despite it being expensive and limited to 4GB. Too bad, I would have gladly paid even more than $5/mo if this actually worked and exuded confidence in its capabilities and reliability.

Since my post about 2 weeks ago, I’ve been able to work through at least the most critical issues with MozyHome. For ~$50/yr, its a good deal no doubt when compared to the ~$17/mo I’ve been paying for Iron Mountain’s Connected Online Backup 4GB solution which I just canceled after 8+ years of a subscription. I’ll probably just do periodic backups to DVD and use Mozy as an offsite backup of last resort.

I will say Mozy’s tech support was not been tremendously impressive but at least I got a reply… Sadly that more than I can say about some other companies. The real fixin’ was left to myself to determine just why the darned thing wasnt working despite sending log and dump files to to Mozy. Turns out there are registry values that needed tweaking to get it it work.

The restore via XP explorer and the virtual drive map to Mozy are completely FUBAR (app crashes and takes the service down hard) so I had to disable that feature. No real big deal since I can do without that option. Guess its still a product in its infancy so one needs to either expect/accept such issues or simply look elsewhere. At least its inexpensive tho the old adage “you get what you pay for” may very well apply here.

Check out XZ Backup (www.xzbackup.com). Their website kinda sucks, but the prices are pretty good and they are super reliable. I use them and had to restore after one of the drives in my RAID1 set up died.. instant restore. No self extracting zips, no waiting. Plus they don’t throttle your bandwidth- you can upload or download as fast as your connection allows. Highly recommended.

My bad, I meant RAID 0.

Mozy for Mac has been a nightmare for me. I have a very high-speed DSL connection, a new MacBook Pro, and Leopard. I also used it on a Powerbook running Tiger.

My first tech support request, which came within a day of using it, went unresponded to for about 5 days. That was not the only time an inordinate delay for tech support occurred.

But the main problem was, the software just did NOT work! I signed up at the end of January, and here in early April, Mozy has not succeeded in backing up my 60 GB of data! I have had it running several times daily. The software kept quitting, or connecting but failing to actually upload anything. I exchanged email with multiple tech support people, and went through about 5 upgrades, each upgrade promising to fix the problem that was stopping me from uploading data.

I cancelled today after an upgrade to the most recent version failed to work at all, despite several uninstall/reinstall procedures.

IMHO, Mozy for Mac is not even reliable enough to qualify for a Beta test status. I do personally know ONE Mozy for Mac user for whom this actually seems to work. He is happy. But it seems possible from internet reviews that he is in the minority.

In response to my repeated attempts to problem-solve for Mozy, they extended my contract by 2 months, for free. But I found that the amount of time I was spending trying to get Mozy to work was not worth “free,” even.

Good luck to Mozy, and I hope they get their sluggish technical support times improved, and that someday they have a product worthy of marketing to the Mac community. We Mac users expect better.

In February, I switched to a new computer. After 5 years with my old PC I decided to give it a rest. For two of those five years, I had been a Mozy customer; successfully backing up 160gb of data.

I contacted Mozy via e-mail, the only way to get a hold of anyone, and was provided with instructions on how to do the switch. It seemed simple: install Mozy on the new computer, remove your old computer from the Mozy account, and add your new computer to the Mozy account.

Well, it turns out that Mozy doesn’t know how Mozy works!

The minute I removed my old computer from the Mozy account, Mozy’s servers deleted my backup. That’s right kids…160gb of backed up data just vanished!

I contacted Mozy and they kept insisting that their servers were just indexing my data and not uploading anything. Were I an idiot, as they are, I would have fallen for that lame explanation. But I realized that my bandwidth usage was through the roof as Mozy uploaded all 160gb once again (a 5 month process with broadband and Mozy errors).

I have an incredibly frustrating e-mail trail of me trying to get my data back and Mozy denying they screwed up. Towards the end, Mozy’s tech support finally admitted that my data was in an “old server” and could not be moved to a “new server”. Whatever that means!

I also sent them an e-mail advising them of a security hole int heir account setup process. A hole so big, that it allows any hacking with an 8th grade education to gain unprotected access to anyone’s backed up files. Mozy responded by taking down their site in mid April ‘08 for two days. I guess they were trying to repair a flaw that had been present since I had been a customer for two long years.

I’ve had it with Mozy and their Starbucks approach to doing business. I canceled my account and will never give those fools my business.

I had been using mozy since the new year and stubmled onto this site today- boy am i glad.

As a test I tried to restore from Mozy’s virtual drive in Window Explorer under Vista- I found out that on one of the directories that I often move and update/delete files, that the mozy virutal drive have all my previoulsy deleted files, as well as current ones- it was a total mess!

Going to the webrestore, however, did show the right number and current files in the directories.

Reading all these bad experiences with Mozy is really making me think about changing to CrashPlan

I have Mozy Pro but can’t get the tech support phone number. They have screwed up my account and have it listed as regular Mozy, which does not offer 24/7 tech support. My computer has crashed and I need to restore my files.

Mozy is junk. I wasted $$$ on a year’s subscrition to the service. I then spent two weeks with my computer running handicapped while Mozy supposedly slowly did the inititial backup. However, after two weeks Mozy informed that the backup had been “cancelled”. I tried to start over several times but each time same result. Fortuneately the IPO market is shut down and these guys will hopefully go out of business before they can inflict more innocent users with this incredible waste of money and time.

Today, May 4th, the Mozy site has been down all day, and I cannot back anything up. Seriously thinking about jumping ship with this service.

Want the scoop see this article:

http://www.justinball.com/2008/02/22/mozycom-and-their-backup-software-is-shit/

after 6mns with Mozy on my new desktop, running on XP Pro, it dnld. automatically, the newest version, 1.8.8.0 on 5/21/08 (previous was 1.8.6.21)... Everytime the auto backup starts, it crashes my computer… Spent over 9hrs. with Mozy chat “help”, & got nowhere… They kept telling me it was my system, not Mozy, that was causing the crash (which have been going on for almost a week now)... They would not connect the dots: old version, Mozy works fine; new version, Mozy crashes computer… I got nowhere, even with a phone call to a tech manager… Since they still insisted that it was my fault, and offered no solution, I told them they gave me no choice, but to cancel my 2 annual accounts… But wait… I’m the one renaging on my annual contracts… So, even though I have 6mns left, they really don’t have to give me any refund (even tho their product doesn’t work, a contract is a contract)....... BUT… Just to show their good guys, they’ll give me a “courtesy” refund of 3mns…... When I told them i’ll see them in Small Claims Court for the 6mns, he went into a “script” about threatened litigation, and hung up on me… I will never recommend the service…. Their tech support is useless, and a waste of time… I’m back to the free service i have: automatic backups on my own… Not that much work, but you’re guaranteed your files back if you need them.

I had the same thing happen today as in the above post by “billy”. The update required a restart and after restarting it would load Windows (XPHome) and then reboot. So, after going into safe mode and restoring to the day before, I’ve turned off Mozy. Since I’m using the free version, I just emailed them once after turning it off. I’ll probably be looking elsewhere.

It seems only my manual backups on my servers work, both separate servers fail with SSL or connection errors when run to do simple 100M daily incremental backups. Support is very cheeky too, and blames everything like sunspots, the internet, etc. Perhaps if mozypro was written to do real p2p style backups it would be able to retry and get through it’s issues rather than greeting me morning after morning with a reason WHY my scheduled backup failed the night before. I will cancel, the product is not working as advertised. “Set it and worry about it”, not “set it and forget it!”

I had Mozy set up on 4 different computers using the free 2 Gig limit, and never had a problem. But then I paid for an unlimited account for 1 computer and was never able to backup my 35 Gigs successfully, so I canceled the account a year early. They did refund my money for the remaining year. Tech support was totally useless – they kept saying it was my problem (firewall, or bad connection) even though I explained to them that the free version worked just fine.

Just yesterday I realized I somehow lost all my girlfriend’s pictures (2 Gigs) when absorbing her old computer onto mine. Mozy saved me and I was easily able to restore using the option to download the zip file. The only problem is that it didn’t work on firefox, had to use IE for the Mozy website restore command and download.

I might try Mozy again and see whether I have a better experience. It’s consistently rated the highest in online backup reviews, which makes me wonder why I had such big problems.

I have Mozy set up on our main home PC (Vista) and my wife’s laptop (XP) and ever since the 1.8.8.0 automatic upgrade I have been having all kinds of problems with getting it to actually back anything up on the Vista machine. The backup starts but then doesn’t actually do anything and also seemed to have lost track of what was backup up and what wasn’t.

I talked to Mozy support last night and they advised me to download the 1.8.8.2 client which they said fixes a lot of the problems they know about with Vista. I have downloaded it and it definitely does. The tech I talked to said everyone running on Vista should download this version, and anyone having problems with Mozy on other Windows version should also upgrade.

Hi,

my experiences with Mozy were good up to the point where Mozy backup won’t backup and quits with “FilterError0”.

At this point I recognized that the only support Mozy is offering is just and email address. So I wrote down my probs (with screenshots etc) and I sended them to Mozy. After two (!!!) weeks without any reaction, I wrote again and again and after these attemps I got an email (not an solution) from support whether I could give them information about my installed virus software. This was 2 weeks ago. So the whole thing now takes over 4 weeks. Remember, just 1 answer in 4 weeks with no solution!

By the way, I have a two year subscription (payed in advance!). I already askes Mozy whether this is the way it goes for paying customers but, guess, no answer so far.

I am very disappointed about this and maybe my experiences give some decision help on selection the right online backup provider.

Sounds like a lot of people out there are having problems with Mozy on Vista. And not just with backups either.

Whichever way you look at it, Mozy appears to be a flawed service. I’ve blogged about it way back in October on my online backup software review and my comments still hold try.

I’ve switched to Angel Backup and I’ve never been happier.

I just lost about 200GB !! that I had backed up with them over about 8 weeks. I got a “configuration error” on my mac cliebt and was told to reinstall the client. Their email responses are slow and pathetic.

I wish I could undo my 2 year commitment.

You can ask Mozy and they will refund your $. You are not stuck using Mozy.

Well I had to upload all my data again but they did extend my plan by 2 months after I asked. But now I have not been able to connect to their servers for 4+ days and have not had a response to about 4 polite emails to support. I can understand worse service for non-paying customers, but I paid them. If their business model does not permit reasonable service for the price they charge, they should let you know up front.

For crying out loud, you are essentially paying them for support in times of crisis. Their poor customer service would make anyone question the wisdom of using their service. I strongly advise people to look at the other online backup plans. I will now try to get my money back from Mozy.

Anyone know a phone number? Nobody has responded to my emails to support. I have had no service for 6 days now.

Mozy’s phone number is on their Contact Us page. Good luck.

interesting story about Mozy extorting people to restore data

Issues with Mozy:

1. can not restore documents from a failed laptop from the Mozy Home application, one needs to use the web restore

2. Web Restore had 48 hours to prepare the requested data, had to call three times to get the files prepared as some processes hung. Only an escalation to a manager made the files available for download

3. Not all data was delivered. My local folder I wanted back had 50 GB of data. Mozy did only backup 26 GB of that data, it seems Mozy did not upload those files or the algorythm for the restore did not allow those files for restore

4. Could download the data to the local hard-disk. It was zipped with 7zip and an executable for self extraction. After extraction I had already twice the amount of data on the disk. As the zip file and the extract was there.

5. I use a private encryption key. I had to decrypt the data on my own (which is what I want). Decryption went to another folder. So now already three times the data stored: zip file, extract and decrypt data

6. Decryption could not decrypt all files. 13000 files out of 26000 could not be decrypted because of padding errors. No further explanation, the data is just lost. Of course I use the correct key as else the other 50% of the data could not be decrypted.

7. The files that could not decrypt are copied as well in to the destination folder. So lots of corrupt and unreadable files clutter the disk. In worst case it could overwrite a good copy still available on the disk or restored from other sources.

8. After decryption the modified date is set to the decrypt operation date. So if existing data is present and the data is copied back to the original location, it will be overwritten as the modified date is newer but should be set to the data of the original file modification time when the file was backup.

9. After doing a web-restore the files are kept on a plain http server where everyone can download the files if they know the right URL. These are long URL’s, however a bot has crawled those URL’s quickly. Further Mozy has promised that all data is encrypted and transported in an encrypted way. Placing the files on a HTTP server without SSL is certainly not an encrypted transport.

Conclusion:

Mozy is unusable in its current state. It doesn’t protect data as over 50% (most likely much more because of point 2) of the data could not be restored. Its extremely complicated to use, not secure, slow and does not live up to the promises made.

I have contacted Mozy several times. There troubleshooting steps are one-liner emails with vague answers circling around the issue.