Mozy Restore Sucks
I want to apologize now to all the people to whom I’ve lauded Mozy. I take it all back. I am far from alone.
Mozy is actually a succubus, a demon sent from hell to suck the life out of men (coincidentally, one of the top 5 South Park Episodes ever). Your relationship with Mozy begins much like one with a beautiful woman. However, one morning your hard drive crashes and you realize that you’re married to Roseanne Barr. Except that she has your data. And she’s sitting on it.
My hard drive crashed. It’s been 3 weeks and I just finished recovering my data. After this experience it is pretty clear that Mozy has invested heavily in backing up your data, but had the interns write the recovery code.
My story of woe follows if you’re interested in the details. The executive summary is Don’t Use Mozy. I strongly regret having bought an annual subscription for 2 computers (instead of paying monthly).
I’m still trying to find an alternative solution. JungleDisk (S3), Carbonite and Crashplan seem to be the leading contenders.
Restoring Via Mozy
Day 1: I installed my new hard drive and used the opportunity to install Vista. I installed Mozy to restore my files, but it didn’t recognize my computer. Online help files had no information about this instance. I emailed support.
Day 3: After a bit of back and forth they sent me instructions to uninstall Mozy, reinstall it partially and then run an attached script that edited my registry. Fine. A little inconvenient, but acceptable.
I ran the script, started Mozy and went to restore my files. There were no files to restore. Nada. Not a single of my backed up files could be found. I began to grow concerned and this time I used their painfully slow live rep support IM. After much confusion, they told me that I could only do a Web Restore or order DVDs (but that my files were safe). The DVDs would cost $100 and I had no interest in waiting for physical media to be mailed, so I chose the web restore.
The first step in the web restore process is to ‘build’ a restore. I kicked off the restore and refreshed the page a few times waiting for the downloads to be ready. After 10 minutes of this I gave up. 7 hours later, my status still said 0 of 18K files ready. I was a little concerned so I emailed support.
Day 4: No word from support, so I used IM to ‘speak’ with a rep. They told me that it usually takes a day or two for restores of my size to complete. Later in the day, support emailed me back and informed me that my download was at 17.9K of 18K files. Almost there!
Day 8: Still at 17.9K. I emailed support again. A day later I was told that the issue had been escalated.
Day 12: Still at 17.9K files. Still nothing after escalation. I emailed support again.
Day 13: I’m pretty pissed at this point so I IM support. They first tell me to do something that I cannot do (start a second restore). After we get over this confusion, the rep logs into my account and uses ‘extra priviledges’ to start a new restore without canceling the first.
Day 14: My files are ready (both restores)! But I’m traveling. Mozy is quick to tell me that I only have 7 days to download the restore files before they are deleted and I have to rebuild.
Day 19: I get back to my PC under restore. All I needed to do was download 30GB in 10 separate files. Unfortunately, Mozy seems to allot more bandwidth backing up files than for downloading files. Using Flashgot, Mozy would only give me 300-400 Kbps - about 10-20% of my measured available bandwidth. Not to mention the countless timeout errors that I received from Mozy.
Day 20: After many problems downloading, I finally got my files. A handful of hours unpacking and my files are back in their rightful place. Later in the next day, Mozy emails me to tell me that all of the restores have been deleted.
Yes I did get my files in the end. But restoring files took so much time and energy on my part that I may as well have been running my own backup system. Their support utterly failed (not for a lack of good intentions though). I’m now looking at alternative solutions and will switch over as soon as humanly possible.
Update:
I should add that Mozy is re-uploading every single file. So, according to the backup client, I have 6 more days until the cycle is truly complete.
[...] I take back all the good things I said about Mozy. Mozy actually sucks. [...]
You downloaded 30 GB of data in one day? (Day 19 to Day 20?) Wow… that’s really not too shabby. How long did it take you to back that much data up originally?
Truth is, it took several days, but there were enough hiccups in the process that I figured it was roughly a day’s worth of downloading.
Wow. What an ordeal. I am trying out different online backup services as well.
So far the best one I have found is http://www.elephantdrive.com . The best thing about the service is that once the files are backed up, they become immediately available for download/restore. There is no “restore” preparation process. You can download a few files or all of your backed up data. Thats kinda neat because if my laptop fails, chances are I will need some of my files quicker than others.
I have also been using the service to transfer files between work and home.
Sorry to read about troubles. We’ll let you restore up to a terabyte a day but I doubt your connection can handle that. That’s the entire problem with online backup. If you’re backing up more than a few GB, beware! Takes a long time to get back.
CrashPlan has a few cool features to circumvent this reality:
1. We let you backup on-site as well as off-site.
2. If you back up to 3 off-site locations, we’ll let you restore in parallel from all 3 at the same time, to speed things up.
3. If you back up “near off-site” – say a friends house or your office – you can restore within hours directly to a USB drive instead of over the net. Bring a Wii.. a few beers, make it a restore party! :)
S3 can’t compete – protocol is too slow. I recommend testing our backup speed, data sent, and data received. You’ll find we use far less bandwidth, and we’re far faster.
~Matthew / CrashPlan
On the subject of file backup, sharing and storage …
Online backup is becoming common these days. It is estimated that 70-75% of all PC’s will be connected to online backup services with in the next decade.
Thousands of online backup companies exist, from one guy operating in his apartment to fortune 500 companies.
Choosing the best online backup company will be very confusing and difficult. One website I find very helpful in making a decision to pick an online backup company is:
http://www.BackupReview.info
This site lists more than 400 online backup companies in its directory and ranks the top 25 on a monthly basis.
Dave, thanks for the link love in your post. You have my deepest sympathies. I still wake at night screaming from my Mozy nightmare….
I have new-found backup joy with my Time Capsule. It sits inside a locked closet quietly backing up 1TB of data every hour of the day…
My second piece of mind is the hard drive locked in my desk drawer that contains a fully bootable backup of my two main Macs.
My destiny is now my own- and my recovery plan is in my own hands…
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.
I couldn’t agree with you more – I am currently going through the exact same ordeal. The restore service is not only absolutely slow – it also DOES NOT RECOVER THE SAME FILES YOU BACKED UP. This service is like an airbag which gives you the message “please wait” while you crash into a tree. What a rip-off!
Sorry to hear you’ve had the same level of “service” in dealing with Mozy as a paying customer that I experienced after evaluating their software on a free basis. At least I got what I paid for (and what Mozy is worth): $0.00.
I tried various online backup programs and have zero faith in any of them; in fact, it is truly amazing to me how bad this software is. Every single one of these programs is a resource-eating, bandwidth-wasting, false-hope-producing piece of crud. I recommend not wasting time, money or hopes on any of these BS services.
To address my daily backup needs I have a 500 Gb external drive in a USB enclosure and a 16 Gb USB key. All my data has been copied to the external drive; changed files are updated to this drive & the USB key on a nightly basis via an automated task.
I have a backup external drive at work which I swap out with the one at home on a weekly basis. The recently changed files on my USB key are copied to the hard drive on my work PC. So, I have several safeguards in place and I have achieved my goals of constant backup, easy administration, off-site storage and multiple restore locations – and I don’t bog my PC down with poorly-written junkware that fails to deliver the goods as promised.
I wholeheartedly agree. I downgraded from Vista to XP, sorry you went with Vista, you’ll regret it. I still haven’t gotten my files back. I am switching.
I’ve been backed up using Mozy for a while now. Yesterday, I realised I’d deleted a few files I wanted back (nothing critical, some vacation photos I thought hadn’t come out properly, only to discover this was actually a Photoshop issue displaying them wrongly). The good news? The 13Gb Pictures folder was backed up in Mozy. The bad news? No option to restore only deleted files: either download the whole lot to a new location, or download the whole lot over the original location.
Downloading was fine, nice and fast (a few hundred kbyte/sec), so I left it running overnight. When it finished, I was told it had failed to restore two files – but it doesn’t tell me WHICH files! Nothing in the log file, either.
In this particular case, at worst I’ve lost two photos, with a bit of luck they were both expendable anyway – but this hardly inspires confidence in Mozy: they could as easily have been my accounting application’s main database, client contact information…
Mozy is a POS!! I used it to backup a bunch of files I had on an external USB drive and it deleted them all from my online backup!!! When I needed to use the drive for something else, the backup ran and I seriously think Mozy thought I deleted the files rather than just the device being disconnected. Luckily I had made a secondary local copy of my data but if I hadn’t, my files would be gone. I’ve tried it a couple of times now and this happens every time. Who designed this POS, Donald Duck? I’ve seen high school projects work better than this.
Highly Recommend eSureIT – http://www.intronis.com/esureit-home/
eSureIT has been rock solid for me and I am very happy with it. Backups are reliable, fast, and the interface and feature layout are clean, unlike the hack job Mozy threw together. That and I have never had a problem with restores.
I also tried Mozy and it was a nightmare! It literally brought my system to its knees (probably has all sorts of memory leaks). When I actually was able to successfully backup my files after trying several times, I could never get it to restore successfully. I’ve seen viruses have less damaging impacts to a computer than Mozy's hack job.
I saw Mozy on a server a business associate had – it was set to backup 85GB, but nothing but errors after 15GB or so. After many months I finally got him to try the online service we have been using at work. It is a small company out of Washington state called Subterranean Data, but not a mom and pop in the garage backup type either. For those of you not satisifed with Mozy, try http://www.remote-online-backup.com It is worth the price paid – you can restore your files! Oh, my business associate was able to backup his entire 85GB using http://www.remote-online-backup.com , with one minor error – a permissions issue.
Call VENYU for online backup. They are the original online backup provider called AmeriVault. I love them and will always use their services. The costs are a bit more than what you see with companies like Mozy, but they have never had any complaints. They are a business level solution but trust me they know how to recover your data. No long waits, no recoveries failing and having to start over, just seamless recoveries with the click of a button.
I've used Mozy before as well and had the same issues.
DUDE, George, are you freaking NUTS!? No doubt that Venyu kicks ass, but they quoted me $870/month to back up my 290 GB of data. Fine for an Enterprise solution, but I think the average schmo will stick with their $5/month Mozy unlimited plan. For the record, I've successfully backed up 290 GB on Mozy, and I've successfully performed both a 1 GB and 10 GB restore (more testing to come). No telling what would happen if I had to restore all 290 GB, but I'll take my chances. If I could afford $870/month for offsite backup, I sure as hell wouldn't be driving around in a banged up 2003 yellow Mustang.
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Going through a nightmare trying to restore 6GB onto a new computer. 4 days so far. Mozy non support. We'll see.
Howard
I had tried esureIT and it was a nightmare. I was paying over $300 for 100GB of back for my CPA company. I also used tapes, but when I had an issue with one of my tapes I thought that I would be OK since I had esureIT. Sure enough, when I went to restore I could not get anything. I was really pissed, their customer service is horrible and their tech support didn't seem to even know how to fix their own product. In the end I had to pay $1200 to have the data from my tapes brought back.
After this, I went to Mozy and thier product has been great. I highly recommend them, their product backs up, is cost effective and I am still using tapes as a primary backup. I would never wish the experience that I had with esureIT on anybody. I hope that you have better luck, but I doubt that the company is any good given the very poor experience that I had.
Mozy worked fine for me for almost a year (on a 2 year subscription), then it just stopped backing up. My real beef is with their tech support. I got one email back from them telling me to download the application again, which I did to no effect. Then several more emails from me went unanswered (meanwhile, no back ups). I finally had to dump Mozy and look elsewhere. I'm currently waiting to hear back from them about my demand that they refund my payment for the year I'm not getting. Good luck, huh?
Is anyone else having trouble restoring files from Mozy backup? I uploaded several pictures I wanted to protect but have not been able to restore them. Based on the comments here, I think I made the wrong choice. MOZY appears to be a pile of CRAP!!
have you found a alternative?
Try NetCDP http://www.netcdp.com, back up to amazon S3.
If you are looking for an alternative to Mozy or Carbonite. We just launched our Data Protection service online at http://www.tomnica.com . Not only it provides a great backup service but it also allows you to wipe or encrypt data in case your device gets lost or stolen. Finally, you can monitor your device: screenshots, webcam + location. All those services in 1 package with a neat web interface. We have a free plan for 1 year. Try it out and let us know what you think.
Laurent Luce
Director of Software
Tomnica, Inc.
I thought that Mozy was the perfect solution to migrating all of my files to a new computer. Instead, I’ve spent 2 weeks – not quite your 20 days, but hey, I'm not done yet – trying to restore my files. The time it takes to restore files is generally a few days for the amount that I have. I am not able to sit at my computer and monitor the little green progress bar for 48 hours straight, so it never fails that when I turn my back on the computer, I return to a “connecting to server” message. Is my restore starting over again? I just don’t know. I have some shortcut icons in my programs list that have 8 copies. Is this because they are the first files to be restored each time I start back up and keep adding new file copies? So I have 8 shortcuts to Adobe reader, but 98% of the other files on my computer are inaccessible.
I also went the web restore method, as recommended by the IM support – I am currently killing time while waiting for those files to download for the second time (the first time they wouldn’t open in my unzip program). We’ll see if I can even get the content onto my computer. If I do, I was told by support that I will have to manually move each file to the location that I’d like it to be in on my computer. So much for the selling point of automatically restoring files to their original location (this perk only applies to the desktop restore option – which I think we’ve established just doesn’t work.)
I would have been better off taking a few days and transferring everything via a 3.5" floppy disk, back and forth from old to new computer. It would have taken a long time, but couldn’t be nearly as frustrating as the mozy restore process.