Review: Mozy Online Backup for Mac disappoints
The 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 - 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 piece 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.
Posted at 1:21 pm on Sep 25th
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.
Posted at 1:36 pm on Sep 25th
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?
Posted at 1:41 pm on Sep 25th
p.s. this is interesting comparison:
http://www.macworld.com/article/142606/2009/09/online_backup.html
Posted at 1:43 pm on Sep 25th
@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.
Posted at 4:22 pm on Sep 25th
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.
Posted at 4:54 pm on Sep 25th
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.
Posted at 9:13 pm on Sep 25th
Any chance MozyPro would be any better? I suspect not, but what business-grade data backup solutions exist for macs?
Posted at 2:04 am on Sep 26th
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
Posted at 5:29 pm on Sep 26th
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.
Posted at 7:00 pm on Sep 26th
@Andy - is there a Mac version of CloudBerry Backup available? I can only see Windows and Linux editions…
Posted at 12:45 pm on Sep 27th
I had this problem with Mozy before and i found it very hard to restore all my data.
Posted at 12:05 am on Sep 28th
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.
Posted at 10:24 am on Oct 9th
[…] Review: Mozy Online Backup for Mac disappoints (en.onsoftware.com) […]
Posted at 10:05 am on Nov 9th
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.
Posted at 9:59 am on Nov 23rd
found this coupon https://mozy.com/?code=KMLYU7
you get extra 512 MB free (checked, it works!)
Posted at 6:57 pm on Dec 27th
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!
Posted at 10:39 pm on Jan 11th
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
http://www.mozy.com
January 11, 2010 4:35 PM