Review: Backup Data Online with Mozy
Posted by Jon Lee in Efficiency, Reviews, tags: backup, mozy, review
Yesterday, I mentioned Mozy as the program that I use to do backup data online. I’ve used several different online backup services in the last couple years and I’ve been using Mozy for over a year now so I feel I can write a decent review of it.
What is Mozy
Mozy is an automatic remote backup service for Windows and Macs (sorry, no Linux support yet but if you’re using Linux I’m sure you’d much rather use rsync anyway). You schedule Mozy to do backups of whatever data you select and it will perform incremental backups (meaning only changes are updated) so backups are fast and you can easily rollback to any prior backup — sort of like Mac OS X’s Time Machine feature.
Backups are encrypted on your computer with a strong 448-bit Blowfish encryption and are then sent to Mozy’s servers through an 128-bit encrypted SSL connection. Your data is fully secure and if you wish, you can specify your own encryption key so even Mozy can’t have access to your data (just make sure you don’t lose your key!).
For the full list of features, check the Mozy website.
Setup Interface
The Mozy configuration interface is powerful yet easy to use. You can set it to backup certain folders or certain filetypes. There are also backup sets that are prebuilt for you, i.e. Music, Financial Data, Photos, Word Documents etc. Currently, I have mine set to backup my word documents and presentations, web pages and Firefox profile.
Mozy also allows you to schedule backups for a certain time or have it run in the background when your CPU usage is under a certain amount. This way your backup data will always be up-to-date. There is also an option to throttle your bandwidth so you don’t compromise your regular surfing. I have mine set to do a full backup at 3am every day and it hasn’t failed me yet.
Accessing your Backups
So having a backup is great but what’s the use if you can’t access it! Mozy allows several different ways to access your data and all of these ways allow you to access any of your previous backups — not just the latest one. One way is to login through their website which you can do from any machine. You select the files you want to download and Mozy will prepare a zip file of the requested files for you to download.
The second method is to use their Windows explorer restore feature. You can either open your Mozy drive directly from My Computer or you can right-click in any directory and select which files you wish to restore. This only works on computers that have the Mozy software installed though.
Finally, for a small fee, Mozy can prepare a DVD of your backups and have it shipped to you. If you have a lot of data, this could be the most efficient way of doing it.
Cost
The best part of all this is the cost, Mozy is completely free to use! On a free account, you get 2gb of online storage space which is plenty for your word documents, presentations and important files (but not enough for your music, photos and videos). They do offer an unlimited account for 5 bucks a month which is great but personally, I find the free account has just enough space for my needs (I’ve used up about 99.4% of my 2 gigs).
Also, if you use me as a referral, both you and I get an extra 256mb of storage space with your free account! So technically, with enough referrals, you can have a practically unlimited amount of storage space. If you want to sign up with me as a referral, use this link and in the referral box enter my referral code: T3DN37
Remember to enter it otherwise you won’t get the 256mb bonus! And when you find that your storage space isn’t enough, either upgrade to their unlimited account or simply refer some friends! 
Disadvantages
Obviously, Mozy isn’t perfect. Their drive mapping feature doesn’t allow for drag and drop operations. This isn’t a deal breaker by any means since I hardly access my backup data but it’s a little touch that would make it better. I know IDrive-e has this feature but I’ve tried them and I’ve experienced connection problems and haven’t been too impressed with their service.
Also, the Mozy configuration screen takes a long time to load (almost a minute). Most of this time is spent creating and refreshing backup sets. It would be nice if I could turn this backup set feature off since I prefer to define my own backup directories.
Support
I haven’t had many problems with the Mozy software but the one time I did contact their tech support, I received a reply within the hour which is excellent. I’ve heard from others that they’ve had great technical support. If you ever try them out, let me know so I can update this section.
Remember to enter my referral code T3DN37 when you sign up so we both get an extra 256mb of storage space. Affiliates can sign up for their affiliate program and help spread the good word! If anyone else has used Mozy, I would like to hear your experience of it!
Click here for up-to-date coupons for Mozy.
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Very good post. I’ll have to check them out!
For online backup news, information and articles, there is an excellent website:
http://www.BackupReview.info
This site lists more than 400 online backup companies and ranks the top 25 on a monthly basis.
Any one can add their company in the directory. Just click on the “Search” button found at the top.
Cheers,
Mozy rules! great post.
[...] Link to Article linux Review: Backup Data Online with Mozy » Posted at jon lee dot see eh | a [...]
Great review, I will have to check this service out. thanks…
Thank you for posting this; I’ve been looking for a trust-worthy back-up system and so far, I’m liking what I see. And it’s free, too, so that makes it uber awesome.
I’m glad you like it, the encryption is a very nice added touch because I woudln’t want people to have access to my latest and greatest source code!
Lo and behold! Mozy is #1!
I’m glad I picked a winner, thanks for the link!
great post. i liked the review. very professional
[...] some more product reviews Reviewed: mediatemple, Mozy, and more [...]
Interesting, about IDrive-E, which I’m looking at. I wrote a screencast about Mozy, here:
http://mainstream-guides.com/Mozy
The thing in Mozy I find lacking, which I thought IDrive-E might respond to, is that Mozy won’t provide an archive for files that you erase from your computer. I’m under the impression that you have to tell IDrive-E to get rid of files you no longer find useful.
No doubt about it, though, Mozy is very clean, very well constructed, very well presented.
If you get a chance, elaborate on your “connection problems” with IDrive-E. Does it relate to rapid growth pains, perhaps?
Hey I love how you do screencasts of products. Very visual and useful! Albeit not as good for search engines but very informative for readers!
With IDrive-E, I installed it to give it a shot but the connection couldn’t be established at home or at work. So I gave up on it and Mozy worked flawlessly. Could have been growth pains, it could be working again now but I’m happy with Mozy plus I’ve been getting some extra storage space from readers so I think I’ll stick with it
> Albeit not as good for search engines but very informative for readers!
Hey, I’m a nubie at optimizing for search engines. You have any suggestions?
I’m in the middle of doing an IDrive-E screencast, so check back in a few days if you’re curious…
As I indicated I would, I did a screencast on IDrive-E, which positions itself as a direct competitor to Mozy:
http://mainstream-guides.com/IDrive-E
I like Mozy a lot. The main difference, and the reason I went ahead and reviewed IDrive-E, is that, in addition to doing automated backup, it allows you to archive files that you remove from your local disk. (Mozy only guarantees a 30-day lifetime for files you delete from your computer.)
Although IDrive-E is otherwise similar to Mozy, there are a number of things that make me like Mozy better, as you’ll see…
Great guide! I recommend everyone to take a look at it as well as the Mozy screencast link above: http://mainstream-guides.com/Mozy
As for that search engine optimization comment before, I think having a transcript or at least a summary of your points along with the video would be good. That way search engines will have some content to crawl while visitors can watch the video.
Aha! Okay, I think I have the search engines covered. In addition to the video screencasts, I’m writing in my blog on the general subject, here:
http://mainstream-guides.com/node/40
(I bagged the MediaMax review, because it just wasn’t worth my time.)
I’m sorry to say that my experience with Mozy has not been so positive. I signed up after seeing the good review in the Wall Street Journal. It seemed to run fine, until the day that I mangled the source code for a programming project I was working on. No problem, I thought; restore it from Mozy. Then I discovered that, although Mozy claimed the backups had been running correctly, it actually hadn’t backed up my source code files in over a month–even though they showed in the backup logs.
Tech support has been slow and unable to resolve the problem; sometimes I’ve waited weeks to get any kind of a response. Their troubleshooting attempts have been pathetic. Multiple uninstalls/reinstalls, including creating a new account, have not resolved the problem. I’ve finally given up and am looking for a new provider of backup services.
My experience with Mozy support has also been poor. I signed up for the $5/month unlimited service but haven’t been able to back up at all, receiving “Connection Error 1″. Three emails to customer service over a week received not even an acknowledgment of receipt.
I can only imagine what a state I’d be in if I were having technical issues with a restore!
I finally sent them an email requesting that they cancel my account and refund my money. No response to that, either. I expect I’ll have to call my credit card company.
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HI there, we have subscribed to Mozyhome (the $4.95/month plan, giving unlimited GB’s) for about 6 months. We were very happy with how each computer automatically did its own backup, and we didn’t have to worry about it.
So, everything was trucking along fine…until my computer started having issues…a few weeks later, my husband’s computer started having issues. Long story short, we are now in the situation where we are trying to put our data onto new computers.
One of the big selling features of Mozy was that you could order the DVD of your data…my husband and I each have about 12-16 GB of stuff on their servers. Seemed like a much better option than downloading. So, we go to order the DVD’s. The first thing we discovered, is that the “small fee” for the DVD restore option of $29 quickly adds up, as the only shipping option is FEDEX express, at $40. So, now a DVD is $69 to receive next day. We contacted Mozy to see if it could be shipped slower, and therefore cheaper…answer: not at this time.
So, we are desperate, we think ok, let’s just get it done. So, I go to order the DVDs, and during the order process, we get an “Oh, by the way, we don’t ship to Canada!!” I figure this is the appropriate website to comment on this, since it is Canadian.
So, I contacted Mozy again asking if there was any way to get a DVD sent to Canada, even offering to give my Fedex number… Over one week later, we received a canned response saying that they only offer the one shipping option at this time (obviously they didn’t read my post). I replied and a couple of days later, received the following:
“Thank you for contacting Mozy support. A dvd restore is an option to you, however, it will take longer for you to receive the disk(s) and will cost more money due to international shipping. If this is an option you would like to pursue please let me know. To do this you would order the dvd and have it shipped here and then we would ship it to you. Let me know what you would like to do and send me your shipping address so we would be able to ship the disk(s) to you if you choose to pursue the dvd restore option. Thank you. ”
Interesting, eh? I am quite disappointed by this, and I think because of it, we will cancel our account. I do a lot of cross border shipping/receiving, and it is really not a big deal to perform it!!
So, keep in mind, the website does not say anything about us Canadians getting different service…you would think as you place your order and provide your address, that they could mention that all services are not available in Canada. andrea
First of all, read glowing reviews on the web about Mozy with a high level of skepticism. Mozy’s marketing department is certainly good at seeding the web with positive “reviews” about themselves. I tried using Mozy’s $5 monthly plan for about six months and finally gave up.
Initially it seemed everything was going well with backing up 180 Gigs of files from my external hard drive. It took about three months of leaving my computer on overnight to get all the files backed up. But I figured that was a one time deal, and from here on I would only need to back up any new files.
But then one day Mozy software indicates that no files have been backed up. After numerous less than helpful and short one or two sentenced e-mail replies from Mozy support, I got an answer (though I must say, Mozy support did respond to my questions in 24-28 hours).
If you have an external harddrive, and if you disconnect it from your computer for any reason, Mozy will immediately mark all your backed up files for deletion in 30 days. Even if you connect the external drive back to the computer, you’ll still have to back up all the files from scratch since those original files will be deleted no matter what. This means I have to spend another three months backing up all my files all over again.
I would avoid Mozy if your goal is to back up an external hard drive. I wish their policy about this would have been more clearly explained on their website.
If it hadn’t been for that, I would not have minded the slow upload times – even if it took three months, and probably would have continued to use their service.
I have used Mozy for the past 9-months simply b/c no other inexpensive online backup options exist for those with large quantities of data 250 +GBs and who run Power PC based Macs. During these 9-months I have experienced nothing but problems. The mozy client consistently has issues of failing to recognize selected files as part of backup sets (therefore not backed up), runs redundant full backups (takes 2-3 weeks) during which time new and modified files are not backed up, conflicts with other programs (including Time Machine), and spontaneously removes previously selected files from backup sets. Countless hours chatting with customer service and updates to the client software have been largely unhelpful in resolving these issues. In short, I have found Mozy to be highly unreliable, but the only low cost option available. So, I have forged ahead in hope that one day they will get it right.
here is a less expensive choice than mozy. Simple sftp server which also offers web access. The beauty is you can use whatever sftp capable client you like.
http://www.datastorageunit.com
only 2.99 a month for unlimited storage.
[...] reviewed Mozy before and found it to be the best back-up solution. 2.5 gigabytes isn’t much space by [...]