Mozy Backup - Designed by Mental Midgets!

[ChadSchieken]

So, after having huge issues with the Mac version of Mozy a few months ago (and ofcourse, they were having "server issues" for a few weeks as well); my iMac G5 died. Not really sure why, and not caring, I figured -- I'm all backed-up thanks to Mozy; I 'll buy a Mac Mini and life will be better. It's faster, smaller, has newer OS.

Wow, what a mistake. Mozy's restore process was designed by someone who actually thinks I have any clue how to go through 256 different restore folders, and know where to place my stuff. Some of the issues I've seen:

• they have 3 methods for restore, but don't disclose that the "web restore" is the reccomended method anywhere unless you ask support
• The Web restore doesn't work (support confirmed this)
• Although I want to all of my data, the client restore doesn't work in "large chunks" but doesn't give me a way to limit it to 100gig at a time (100gig was the support reccomendation)
• The error messages received during client restores don't match the issue being encountered
• Level 2 support is unreachable
• I went three weeks via email support where THEY DIDN'T EVEN RESPOND

Bottom line, Mozy is decent backup software -- they'll always have a copy of your data -- but you never will get it back from them.

 

[iMacGuru]

iDrive for Mac

I've been using iDrive since I bought my iMac in August 2008. It is simple to use and very reliable. I had to restore my harddrive twice recently and iDrive, along with Time Machine, saved my butt.

 

[MiataMac]

I was searching for Mozy restore issues and found this thread, because I'm testing out Mozy as my offsite backup method for my Aperture library (50+ GB). I have it backed up just fine, did it in 17 hours.

Doing an in-client restore would take also around 17-20 hours if it goes well, but it doesn't support *resume*. So if you have to shut down computer, app crashes or something else besides loosing connection, you cannot resume -you'll have to start over.

Now, there's web restore. It will break my 50gb out in files less than 2GB each, so I can download them. Each file is a .dmg file that I will need to decrypt with my personal key (as expected) - AND HERE COMES TROUBLE...

Next up, you'll have this (example folders): Users > username > Pictures > Aperture Library.aplibrary

Inside Aperture Library comes the restored folders, but not all of them. Remember, a bunch of files each less than 2GB. So if I drag "Thumbnails" from my first restored file, to where I want to gather all the files on my disk, and I get another "Thumbnails" folder in the next download file, I cannot merge them. Mac OS X will only replace.

This basically means that you either need a piece of software to do a "copy and merge" or you need to manually go through each folder of your restored files and drag them around - hoping you don't miss anything while doing so.

I'm amazed at how badly designed this is. There has got to be a better way.

Guess I'll have to take another look at Backblaze - or maybe iDrive.

 

[kmaute]

I highly recommend backblaze. I found the Mozy client to be horrible and that carbonite had absolutely horrendous upload caps. Backblaze can overnight a hard drive to you for major restores or prepares zip files for download.

I have some issues with Backblaze's "exclusion settings" as I have access to two internet connections: 1) at work (20 Mb/S up) and 2) at home (2 Mb/S) and so jockeying the initial backup to maximize the efficiency (large files at work, the thousands of small plists and emails at home) can be a real pain. However, the support is topnotch and I can encrypt the data using my own key. I'm a fan.

 

[MiataMac]

Mozy has everything I need - except the restore is crap. Had only the in-client restore support for *resume* or the web restore a better way than giving me tons of .dmg files that I manually have to merge (almost impossible), then I was a happy camper. But no

I'm currently waiting for Backblaze to finish scanning my disk. I tried it before and had a look at their exclusion-approach to backup and I didn't like it. I only need to backup a few files/folders, so excluding everything (and every new folder I create) is not going to work for me. I only want to select what I want to include in my backup and not having to worry about all new files and folders not in the exclude list, to also be backed up.

Question is, if Backblaze can do a better job at restoring than Mozy?

I also gave iDrive a try. Well, it seems they don't support a personal encryption key. That's almost a deal breaker for me. Worst, is their bandwidth throttle, which doesn't work. They call it "auto-pause", and even when set to 25%, it still uploads with as much as my ADSL can do, making my surfing experience horrible.

Other suggestions?