Mozy: Online, Offsite Backups
I didn’t blog about it, but some of you may remember my earlier experiences with Mozy (circa when I went bald from pulling my hair out), but past issues aside, I’ve decided it’s time to try it out again.
I’ve reached the point of data saturation that losing anything would be disastrous. I have hundreds of dollars locked up in iTunes purchases, thousands of photographs in iPhoto, home movies, homework, Quicken data, and years worth of carefully selected preferences and settings. Even though I have Time Machine backup for me regularly, I don’t feel comfortable trusting my entire digital life to a Western Digital My Book Essential Edition.
I downloaded the Mozy application for Mac OS X Leopard yesterday, and so far, it’s been uploading and backing up my data just fine, at least until my MacBook Pro goes to sleep. After that point, it wants to start completely over again. Not cool. I’ve already spoken with Mozy about it. We’ll see what happens. I’ll keep you posted on Twitter, and be looking here for a “full” review in a week or two.
Update: Tuesday, January 27 at 3:05
Mozy responds: “@calebhays I believe that if your computer goes to sleep, you’ll have to restart the backup.”
Okay, that’s not great, but we can work around it, as long as my University internet connection cooperates.
Update2: Tuesday, January 27 at 3:54
In an email, Nate Kartchner from Mozy Support replied:
OK, so I talked to someone in support and basically, I was mistaken. I guess the way it works is that the Mozy client takes a look at the overall amount of files to be backed up and then divides it into mini-backups. Then, the client will back up each of the mini-backups, check with the server, and then back up the next mini-backup. That way, if the backup is interrupted, the server can tell the client to start at the most recent mini-backup without having to go back to the beginning. Hope that makes sense. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks,
Nate
So, that’s a little bit more reassuring. I’ve yet to see these “mini-backups” in action, but at least their support is responsive.
Update3: Sunday, March 22, 2009 at 10:08 p.m.
The mini-backups do exist! My Mozy client application had been going strong for three months, slowly but surely backing up over 165GB worth of my data. That is, until tonight. I clicked “Start Backup” and after its usual recalculating warm-up time, Mozy informs me it’s backing up around 250 GBs, meaning something is missing. Sure enough, when I checked my profile on Mozy.com, it showed I’d only ever backed up 14 GB. Now, I didn’t change my backup set, so why did Mozy feel it was okay to erase my backups? Argh. It’s very frustrating, and not very professional. I’ve put in an email to Mozy Support. I’ll post the response.
