http://www.datastorageunit.com

only 2.99 a month for unlimited storage.

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.

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

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.

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.

http://mainstream-guides.com/node/40

(I bagged the MediaMax review, because it just wasn’t worth my time.)

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.