Problem with Mozy [Updated]

Mozy Error Message

Over the years I had explained to many friends who use personal computers to perform regular backups of their data. Even so, many of these friends still do not do so, pointing to reasons that doing a backup is too complicated and technical. So when I heard about this online backup tool, “Mozy”, that recently released a Macintosh client, I was excited to give it a run through, before recommending it to my friends.

Unfortunately, right after I down load the Mac OS X client, installed it and began the configuration assistance process I encounters a problem. I keep receiving the error message:

Could not log in
Mozy could not log you in. Please try again or contact support (support@mozy.com).(Error code: -2)

This happened right after I entered the credentials for my account. Although, using the same credentials I was able to log into the Mozy web site using my browser.

So I thought the cryptic error code may means that the Mozy server was busy. Possibly due to all the press that it was getting for finally releasing a Mac OS client. According to these same press coverages they are the first among these service providers.

I waited a day and then retried, but with the same result. So I followed the advise of the error message and sent an email to Mozy support at their specified email address, asking them for their assistance.

I was surprise and a bit annoyed to receive the follow reply from their support;

This means that you’re using either an invalid username or
password. If you have the right client version and you can’t
remember your password, reset it here:http://mozy.com/login/forgot

When I clearly stated that I was able to log into the Mozy web site with the same credentials and could not with the Mac OS X client.

So I had to waste time replying to their email reiterating the fact that I was able to log into the Mozy web site. I then receive the following from their support representative:

Even though you can still log into your online account, most people can resolve this issue by resetting their password. You can reset your password at http://mozy.com/login/forgotIf you’ve already configured Mozy, you’ll have to change your password on the client. You can do this by clicking “Configure.” After loading, the configuration will prompt you for the new password.

By this time I was fair upset with their incompetence and the clear failure to read my original email.

I had already told them that the problem with the Mozy Mac OS X client was right after I installed the client application for the first time, which it began to guide me through their Configuration Assistance, and after the step where I had to enter my Mozy credentials.

So, either the support representative (“Spencer”) did not read my emails at all or he is not even familiar with their own software workflow.

What I did was again reply to their email explaining myself the third time. While at the same time gave them the benefit of the doubt and request a reset of my password through the URL they had provided me in a previous reply. Not to my surprise, the reset of the password did not work.

Therefore, aside from voicing my disapproval of their handling of my problem and their failure to recognize my problem, I included screen (included below) shots to show what I am talking about.

Mozy Error Message

Mozy Error Message

Because fo my experience I advise all Mac users to hold off in trying this software/service until Mozy resolve their issue.

[Update: May 1, 2007]
Mozy support has just replied to my 4th inquiry of my problem and said the following:

We should be releasing a new version later this week that my help with your problem.

So please stay tune.

[Update: May 4, 2007]
Mozy released a new version [v0.4.1.2 (19793)] of the Mac OS X client. It did resolve my problem of the Configuration Assistant not recognizing my account. As the reader, Marcus pointed out it was a permission problem that Mozy did not adhered to. Unfortunately, one problem solved and I am able to proceed a bit further in the Configuration Assistant, but now there is another problem where the Mozy client claims to be “Scanning Backup Sets…” and never finishes. I reported this to Mozy support.

[Update: May 5, 2007]
Mozy released a new version [v0.4.1.4 (19867M)] of the Mac OS X client, so I was eager to try it immediately hoping that it will resolve my problem. Unfortunately, the problem with the “Scanning Backup Sets…” is still there. Of course I immediately reported the problem to Mozy, and they replied that Mozy is a Beta software and they are making improvements constantly, and then asked me to send them my Mozy.log file.

[Update: May 5, 2007]
Mozy technical support replied with the following:

What happens if you let the configuration dialog just run for a while? It should be doing something and it may just take a few minutes.

They appear to be just shooting in the dark. Very typical of my Windows platform software developers. I replied to them saying that the “Scanning Backup Sets…” had ran for at least 5 minutes.

[Update: May 7, 2007]
Another Mozy technical support reply:

Make sure you’re running it as administrator, and make sure your clients stay up to date. This is most likely a bug, and if so, it should be fixed in the next revision.

You can probably guess what I say to them. How can any software developer / company tells the customers to be running in Administrator mode? Especially when Mozy is suppose to be running at all times in the background. I am starting to be very discourage by this company’s ability to create a good reliable product. The latter is extremely important since we are talking about a Backup Utility.

[Update: July 1, 2007]
Now I am running Mozy for Mac OS X version 0.6.0.0. It no longer requires me to be in an account in Mac OS X with administrator rights. As I had pointed out previously that is definitely not a good idea.

Now when I ran Mozy on my Mac, it keeps triggering Little Snitch wanting to contact various servers through port 443. Although, I am uncertain what these servers are; as it only displays the IP addresses of the servers rather than their domains, I still allowed Mozy and MobBackup access.

Shortly after Mozy ran for about 20 minutes it encountered an error “ConnectionError0”. So I reported this to Mozy Support.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I had encountered a problem while Mozy was attempting to backup my
Mac.

  1. Mac OS 10.4.10
  2. Mozy v0.6.0.0
  3. Mac OS X’s built in Firewall is turned on
  4. Internet is accessed from a Router (Apple’s Airport Extreme Base
    Station) via the ISP, Netviator (a service offered by PCCW in Hong
    Kong).
  5. No anti-virus application running other than LittleSnitch, which
    had already set to allow Mozy (the entities Mozy and MobBackup)
    access to servers/ports that it asked for. Currently ports 443
    (https) for the following servers:

    • 66.133.112.13
    • 66.133.112.23
    • 66.133.108.30
    • 66.133.117.214
  6. The error message displayed is “ConnectionError0”

[Update: July 6, 2007]
Mozy support replies to me asking me to send them the log file. They first tells me to go to “C:”, which was silly as that was terminologies for a Windows OS computer.

I had to send them an email reminding them that I was using Mac OS X. So now they tells me that the Mozy log file can be found within the Mac OS X file system

/var/log/mozy.log

So I quickly found the file and sent it to them.

A few hours later they tell me that i am encountering error “ConnectionError0”. Which I was not surprise, as that was what I told them in my original bug report back in July 1.

In the same email, they tells me that “ConnectionError0” means that Mozy is having problems accessing port 443 and asked me to open this port within my Mac OS X Firewall.

So, I replied back to Mozy technical support, asking why does Mozy need to access port 443 and asked whether port 443 is the default port of HTTPS access. Plus none of my other programs have problems accessing ports 443.

Up until now they [Mozy Technical Support] still have not given me any explanations as to why Mozy needs me to open port 443 in my Mac OS X Firewall.

I am guessing that Mozy is setting up a HTTPS server on my Mac to allow Mozy’s own server to retrieve data from my Mac OS X system. Is this a good idea? As I am not a network expert so I cannot tell.

[Update: July 17, 2007]
I finally have time to try Mozy again. So I installed it again, followed the setup and allowed it to run in the background. After Mozy ran for 2.5 hours an error dialog appeared with the following message:

Unable to connect to backup server (ConnectionError0)

The dialog has a hyperlink on the error message, when I clicked on it, it brought me to a web page on Mozy’s site telling me that this is a rare error and that I should send the following information to Mozy (support@mozy.com):

  1. The operating system you use (i.e. Windows XP)
  2. The version of Mozy you are using. (Right click on the orange “M” icon in the bottom right by the clock and click “status.” When that window opens you should see a version like 1.8.2.3)
  3. Do you have any firewalls on your computer?
  4. Who is your Internet service provider?
  5. Do you have any anti-virus or spyware software?
  6. Which error code is displayed? (i.e. MozyClientError2, ConnectionError1)

Of course I again reported this to Mozy Technical support (macsupport@mozy.com). So now I just have to wait for Mozy to reply.

[Update: August 15, 2007]
Mozy support finally replied to me on August 1st but there were two conflicting replies from Mozy support. One tells me to try the new version and the other the other instructed me to go into command line and execute the following:

$ cd /Library/Application Support/Mozy
$ sudo rm -f state.db

it is quite obvious the latter was taking the brut force approach to try to solve my long standing problems. It became apparent that “Karl” is the one who is correct, who asked me to try downloading the new version (0.6.2.0 (332))of Mozy for Mac.

I finally had a chance to reinstall Mozy today and now Mozy appears to be doing its thing. I had configured it to backup all my emails, System Preferences and Keychains. This had already cause it to reach the 2.2GB storage limit for a free account.

According to the Mozy Status window it still has another 4 hours to go. It had ran for about 10 minutes thus far, with a bitrate of approximately 80KB/s.

So what I’ve learned is that Mozy for Mac should be classified as an Alpha status software and not as beta.

One should send all technical enquiries relating to the Mozy for Mac to macsupport@mozy.com and not the regular support@mozy.com email address. You should always reply to the macsupport@mozy.com address even though emails from Mozy does not have that as their reply address.

During the backup, I quit most of the running applications, including Apple Mail, as I was asking it to backup all my emails. I wonder what would happen if I continue to use my Mac regularly and Mail keep downloading and deleting emails. Will these actions confuse Mozy backup?

More to report after the backup is complete.

BTW: some of you may notice in the comments of this article, there is a Mac user who had a great deal of problem retrieving the backup (approximately 30GB) from Mozy for a restore. Although, my backup strategy will not require me to have a large backup, but I do have emails dating back a far as 10 years ago in my Mail database. I would be interested in hearing more experience from Mac users who had tried to restore their Mozy backups.

[Update: August 19, 2007]
When the set up and scanning of my Mac went some what smoothly I thought Mozy has finally corrected all the problems for this “Alpha class” software for the Mac.

After numerous attempts of the background Mozy application trying to back up my 2.2GB of data to Mozy server. I spent some time looking at the mozy.log (/var/log/) file that Mozy support and pointed me to previously. What I found was very disturbing. I see many many occurance of error:

2007-08-19 05:12:41.651 MozyBackup[7590] (triton) NSCFInputStream error: NSError “POSIX error: Operation timed out” Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=60
2007-08-19 05:12:41.651 MozyBackup[7590] (triton) disconnecting…
2007-08-19 05:12:41.653 MozyBackup[7590] (send) Batch failed: NSError “Error com.berkeleydata.Backup.ErrorDomain -2147483648” Domain=com.berkeleydata.Backup.ErrorDomain Code=-2147483648 UserInfo={
ErrorCodeNameKey = ConnectionError0;
ErrorMessageKey = “Unable to connect to backup servers”;
}

Over the 2 hours that the backup had ran so far, it encountered this error 8 times. The most disturbing part is that after each occurrence the backup would continue from an arbitrary spot.

Although, I have yet to find out from Mozy support what these errors means, but it is not making me feel secure that Mozy is a reliable backup mechanism.

My recommendation is still… DO NOT RELY ON Mozy on the Mac at the current version.

Hopefully more to come after I receive some responds from Mozy support.

[Update: August 22, 2007]
Today I received a reply from Moyz Support on my last report of problems with their Mozy for Mac version 0.6.2.0 (1.0). This time it only took 3 days for them to reply.

The one thing different about this, is that during the past 3 days, someone from Mozy sent me an email saying that a specific Mozy Macintosh Technical Support representative (Ben) will follow up on my issues.

Unfortunately, as in the past their tech support gave, in my opinion, a very ridiculous solution for a backup software.

Thanks for sending us the log file. We have been seeing this with the latest version of the Mac Beta and are working to address it. For the most part it seems to be intermittent. You can still back your data up for the time being, it just wont be as convenient since you will just need to restart the backup when it happens or leave it on automatic so it re-attempts every 2 hours. The next release of the beta software will address this.

As most of you will agree, for a backup software, reliability is one of the most important thing to have, and if the user does not know if the back up is successful, or if whether it was actually done. These are not good traits for a backup software to have.

I immediately reply to the Mozy Support copying Mozy Mac Support (macsupport@mozy.com) and Ben.

I then received a reply from Ben, indicating that the new release coming out tomorrow will resolve my problem. I am eager to try and see if this next version will indeed resolve my problem.

As always more to come…

[Update: August 28, 2007]
After being assigned a specific contact, Ben, from the Mozy Macintosh Support, the responses from Mozy has become much more efficient and specific. I hope that this is something that Mozy has recognized and changed for future Mac users.

Anyway, on with my experience on this version of Mozy for Mac (0.6.2.2 (23015)) which Mozy released on August 24, but I was not able to try it out until this morning.

Since I just reinstalled the application, I have yet to confirm is my previous problems have been corrected as reported by Ben. The most noticeable difference with this latest version is that they had changed the icon for the application throughout: in Mozy Status, Mozy and MozyBackup (the latter is a background application).

Unfortunately, with this latest version some other issues with the configuration has creep up where I did not encounter in previous version.

  1. The setup wizard was stuck at trying to log me onto Mozy site. I had to quit and restart the Mozy application before I was able to try again. Then when I tried again it came up with the error message:

    Mozy could not log you in. Please try again or contact us at macsupport@mozy.com.

    (Error: (null))

    Which is a very useless message.

  2. During the attempt to configure Mozy, it keep displaying a error dialog stating that “… no backup had started.”, and this dialog is modal but did not alert me at all. It appears to come from the Mozy Status application, and the dialog is hidden behind all my other active application window including Mozy.
  3. I was finally able to get pass the log in after 3 attempts, Mozy would not stop scanning my drive. The checkbox also started to jump around on the window after I clicked on the “Apple Mail” checkbox. So I quit the Mozy application and tried again. I then encounters the problem logging on again. After a few more attempts (quitting and restarting the Mozy application). It finally able to log in and successfully finish scanning the hard drive.I don’t think the Mozy application should allow the user to click on any of the Checkboxes while it is still scanning the hard drive for the different categories of files and before it finishes “Loading Account Information”.
  4. For some reason the controls (Throttle Slider, the Edit Fields for the Throttle Duration in the Performance pane of the Mozy application Preferences window is very sluggish. The first time I accessed the Performance pane of the Mozy application Preferences none of the other pane (General and Scheduling) were accessible. I had to restart the Mozy application, and I was not able to reproduce this.I do not think that one should be allow to make any changes to the Mozy configurations with the Mozy application when a backup is in progress.
  5. Using the Activity Monitor I see that the MozyBackup application is marked as (Not Responding). This usually happens when it is not being friendly to the other applications that are running on the Mac. This is with my Throttle settings set to 768Kb/s between 09:00 – 03:30 and the test were performed at 14:00 local time.Strangely during this time I see that the Mac does not have any network traffic, the backup is still in progress; with the status message “Communicating with server”. Speaking of the Status window. There should be a preference to keep the Status Window above all other application windows or let it go behind when another application become active.

I had never figure out the answer to this question

Does the fact that the Apple Mail application is running and emails are coming in and out from various different accounts effect Mozy’s current backup, when the Apple Mail Messages is chosen in the Configuration and one type of content to backup?

Why does the Mozy Status Window show that “Backing up 258.3MB (14,677 files)” but when I chose the categories of files to back up, “Apple Mail Messages” alone was over 2GB and then I also chose “Application Preferences” and “Keychains”. The three categories together in the Configuration window shows 2.1GB (65,354 files). Is the Status Window only showing one category at a time?

I will report back when the backup is complete (hopefully).

[Update: October 4, 2007]
After 5 months of testing, back and forth with Mozy support and eventually being assigned a Mozy Macintosh developer to resolve my issues encountered I was finally able to backup my selected files to the Mozy server automatically.

This was all accomplished with version 0.6.2.4 of Mozy Client for Macintosh.

Today Mozy informs me that there is a new version (0.6.4.0 (24503)). Strangely my Mozy client did not know there was a newer version, even though the Mozy Preference “Install updates automatically” was set. I guess and hope this is because Mozy Client for Macintosh is still in Beta.

I downloaded the new Mozy Client for Macintosh and uninstalled my copy of Mozy deleting all configuration files. This is because I want to make sure I am experiencing the new Mozy Client like all other users would.

The following is what I noticed and issues encountered:

  1. It appears that Mozy have added a few more standard set of files to backup in their Configuration window. Given that Mozy Home (free version) only has 2GB of storage available, I do not believe Mozy should select the kind of files by default in the Configuration window.
  2. Also in the Configuration window some of the file types did not have the correct number of files and total size calculated properly. By this I mean that some of the file type were showing -8,xxx,xxx files and ridiculous size. This cleared up after I saved the configuration, restarted the Mozy Client for Macintosh and re-enters the Configuration window.
  3. I then clicked on the “Start Backup” menu item from the Mozy Menu, nothing seem to happen. The Mozy icon in the Menu Bar did not change. I then selected the “Show Status Window” from the Mozy Menu and the following is what shown.Mozy Status Window
    This is very strange, as I cannot believe Mozy would allow this latest version to going backwards in quality. So I clicked on “View Log File…” from the Mozy Menu.

    The Console application opened showing the content of the Mozy.log file. Apparently the Mozy Client is doing something, and what it is doing appears to be related to performing a backup. So I again selected the “Show Status Window” menu item from the Mozy Menu and it still displays, “No Backup Yet”

  4. A welcome change is that Mozy reorganized the Mozy Menu by grouping related functions together using a divider to separate the different groups.

I will be passing these findings to my contact at Mozy immediately and hopefully these issues require just minor tweaking.

I was about to give Mozy for Macintosh a “5 Thumbs Up” after a whole month of use, with uneventful successful backups, but now with the latest version I am reluctant to do so.

26 Replies to “Problem with Mozy [Updated]”

  1. Hi,It seems the mozy client needs the user to have admin rights. Which is not good… the problems went away after promoting my user account to be admin.

  2. Marcus,Thank you for sharing your findings. I believe Mozy may have realized this also, that may be why they tell me that a new version will be available later this week that will soft the problem I am encountering.Should I forward your findings to them?

  3. Mozy makes it clear that this is truly Beta software. They are upfront about current bugs and several times point out that their currently may be problems. They also point out that logs will be transferred, etc. and that if you prefer not to be involved in beta-testing that you wait until the final version is released later this year.

    I’m about to try it out myself, and expect to find things not working well here and there. The right thing to do if you are a BETA-tester is to try to help the developer improve the product, not be so negative in public. This kind of response is what keeps developers from having open beta-testing.

  4. Dan,

    Thank you for your comment, but since you had not try it yourself. You did not know that the initial version of Mozy that they released to the public (as Beta) and even the latest (0.4.1.4) version (4th since) did not work.

    This means that the application does not even allow a user to try the software. The initial version did not allow the user to login to Mozy.

    I had corresponded with Technical Support at Mozy through out these versions and tested them as soon as each of them came out.

    The reason I have to make this public is because many people in the Mac community is promoting the software/service due to advertising buy by Mozy. So it is my desire to ensure that all Mac users know that this software is not ready for the public and definitely do not deserve the “Beta” status that Mozy had given it.

    In typical Macintosh software quality standard this software would be classify as “Alpha” and would be in a closed testing only.

    Plus my opinions are also based on the attitude of the company; as represented by their Technical Support representatives’ responds to my feedback to their software, are not the typical Macintosh software company quality and standards.

  5. Just wanted to add my 2 cents. I use Mozy on the PC and I LOVE this software. I have no doubts that the Mac version will be just as good by the time it is released from beta.

  6. Hi Vinko,

    I’ve been using this software for a few weeks. Although I didn’t have any issues getting it to run, I did have occasion to restore a backup. Here’s what’s happened so far…

    First, a little background. When I was trying to install Windows XP via Boot Camp, the Windows disk erased my OS X partition. (A mostly irrelevant story. The part that is relevant is that it ended up with Apple replacing my hard drive. They had my computer from a Friday afternoon to the following Monday morning.)

    After getting the computer back from the Apple Store, I logged in to Mozy to restore the most recent backup. When I initiated the process of restoring the backup, the Mozy site told me I would receive an email when the backup was ready for download.

    Granted, the backup size was 30 GB, so I would expect it would take a little on the longer side. But Mozy’s site gives no indication of what to expect with wait times. Also, if it had been on another site, the download wouldn’t need to be “prepared”. I could just download it when I need it.

    At this writing, Mozy’s site says nothing to indicate that there is a preparation time in addition to the download time.

    After four days of waiting for the email, I wrote Mozy the following:

    Hello Mozy,

    I recently had a hard drive crash. I logged in to the Mozy site on July 31 to restore my most recent back up. I still haven’t received the email letting me know that the restore is finished.

    Is this normal that it would take over 4 days to recover a backup? If so, it may be advisable to make this absolutely clear to your customers. If I had known backup restores were time consuming, I could have started the restore process immediately when I took my computer crashed. The Apple Store had the computer for 3 days. I started the restore when I got the computer back, thinking it would restore the files as fast as they could download. Now I’m over 7 days without access to my files. If I had known to start the backup restore immediately when the computer crashed, that would have been 3 days less without my files.

    Also, there is no indication on the Restore Files page as to how long the restore will take. So I’m left in limbo, which isn’t acceptable for my work. And, unless there is a possibility that I’ll be able to do immediate backup restores in the future, I’ll be searching for another backup solution.

    Please let me know how long I should expect the backup restore to take. Also, please let me know what Mozy is doing (if anything) to resolve this issue of long wait times.

    Thank you,

    Giovanni

    Here’s the response I received from Mozy:

    Sorry for the trouble. Usually restore files do not take long to build. The main 2 factors are the size of the restore, and the number of requests at the time. I checked on the status of your restore, and it is about 90% built.

    Thanks,
    Dallas

    I finally got the email that Mozy finished preparing the restore the following day, August 4, at 9:06 PM. After the download getting interrupted several times in Firefox, I decided to try it with a download manager I got today (Speed Download). There’s about an hour and a half left in my download as I write this. We’ll see how it goes.

    I think next I’m going to try the suggestion on .

    Any thoughts?

  7. Giovanni,

    Thank you for your contribution to the discussion and the state of Mozy backup.

    I had yet to try their latest version (0.6.0.2) of Mozy backup for the Mac. From my conversation with Mozy Support, they tell me that there is a newer version coming for the week of August 6th.

    One warning about these so call “download managers”, especially “Speed Downoad”. They corrupt your Mac OS X and causes more problems then you want.

    My recommendation is to NOT use these software, particularly “Speed Download”.

    In case you do not know, in the future you should send your emails to “macsupport@mozy.com” for any Mozy issues related to the Macintosh version and Mac OS X.

    Please do contribute again after you had tried restoring the backup from Mozy.

    BTW: it is a good practice to use services like Mozy as periodic backups of the daily changed items, but still have an offline backup schedule for weekly and/or monthly backups; depending on how often these data changes.

    PS: for the weekly and monthly backups it is always a good practice to make a complete duplicate of your internal hard drive. You can use software like “SuperDuper!“.

  8. Hi Vinko,

    Thank you for the tip about download managers. How do you recommend downloading a 30+ GB file from a website without it being interrupted or being resumable if it is interrupted? I tried three or four times without a download manager (just directly from Firefox) and it got interrupted part of the way through each time.

    Then, the download manager got it to 100% finished, but when I went to mount the DMG file, I got an error message saying that there was an invalid checksum. So I went to the Mozy site to try downloading it again and since it had reached 100%, it wasn’t available for download again.

    I send this message to Mozy:

    Hi Mozy,

    After several unsuccessful download attempts, I finally got this download finished, but when I try to mount the image, I get the following message:

    Warning

    The following disk images failed to mount

    Image: mozy_2007_07_31_09_22_XXXXXX 00-XX-XX.dmg
    Reason: invalid checksum

    The file doesn’t appear to be available for download again. Can you make it so that I can download it again and not wait another 5 days for it to build again?

    Thank you,

    Giovanni

    I wrote that email last night and haven’t received a reply from them today. We’ll see what comes.

    Regarding your recommendation of offline backups, that is probably advisable for most people out there, but I’m going to be travelling for months at a time in the near future, so I need to rely exclusively on online backups. Carrying extra hard drives or DVDs around won’t be practical. That’s why I’m going to try the suggestion from the Addison Road blog on how to back up to a Dreamhost account using SuperDuper!. I have a Dreamhost account with plenty of storage and bandwidth and SuperDuper! was so highly rated on Lifehacker, that I’m happy to give it a shot.

    I tried to include the link to the Addison Road blog at the end of my last post, but it didn’t come through. I’m not sure if I made an error in creating the link or if you have a policy about external links that I’m not aware of. In case it was the former, here is the URL:

    http://addisonrd.com/WordPress/2007/03/09/how-to-backup-your-mac-to-a-dreamhost-server-part-1-of-2/

    I think it might be relevant to other people who are trying to use Mozy for the same thing I am.

    Thank you again for the suggestions, Vinko.

    [Correction] The Addison Road blog tutorial is how to backup your Mac to a DreamHost server. It does not use SuperDuper!. I scanned the article before posting and misread the part where he mentions SuperDuper!.

    Giovanni

  9. Hi, don’t worry — your problems are not unique to the Mac version. I’ve been using the PC version for 6 months, and the software has been unusable for 2 of them, and Mozy refuses to give any support help except for “download the latest version” and clearly don’t read any of the support emails you send. I actually included, in all-caps, “I AM INCLUDING THE LOG FILE”, and they write back asking me to send the log file.

    For some reason I’ve been getting Backend errors for about 2 weeks now, I think I’m just about giving up on it.

  10. My original batch of data went up reasonably OK though it did take a good 30 days running 24/7 but as the amount went over 50 gigs it suddenly all stopped working and I am now lucky to manage more than 2 small updates a month. Part of me suspects that their unlimited storage is just a marketing pitch and they may be trying to block users who take up more than a certain amount of drive space. I’ll give it a little more time but if it doesn’t start working like before I’ll close the account. Like others have mentioned support is pretty useless.

  11. All,

    You may want to take a look at a comment left by one of the Macintosh developer (Dan Reese) from Mozy.

    http://www.vinko.com/php/blog/2007/08/28/problem-with-mozy-august-28-update/#comment-972

    They are now very responsive to issues I come across and appear to be working hard to nail all existing bugs.

    I do agree that Mozy support quality is not consistent, as proven by the feedbacks from other users and my own. I do reiterate that everyone should be forwarding all Mozy for Mac technical issues to macsupport@mozy.com rather than the standard Mozy support as stated on their site.

  12. I have frequently sent emails to mac support but they always come back from the normal support address and the only suggestion they ever have is to re-install the latest software. I really hope Mozy can improve.

  13. Still here with endless problems from Mozy and frankly I am sick of writing to them only to have them ask every time to see the log. Its only worked properly on one day so far this month. Time after time I get error 1 connection problems and it never completes. I guess I’ll need to find an alternative.

  14. I finally gave up on Mozy yesterday after looking at my email history and realising that I had written to customer support no less than 38 times since June and always with the same problem that their system just isn’t working and transfers constantly fail. What is the point of continually re-installing the software and sending them logs if nothing ever changes?

    Its a great idea but in practice its just cost me a lot of wasted time. I think a fireproof safe with large sata drives probably makes more sense.

  15. Hi Ashley,

    Thank you for sharing your experience.

    I too have found that Mozy Technical Support (macsupport@mozy.com) had been unresponsive. This is even with my direct Mac Support contact (Ben).

    It all happened about the same time that Berkeley Data Systems, the provider of the Mozy service, was purchased by EMC Corporation.

    May be these people are no longer there.

    As for the latest version of Mozy for Mac. It is horrible. Its functionality seem to had gone backwards and most of my files; the ones from Apple Mail had not been backed up for weeks. Eventually I uninstalled Mozy for Mac all together.

    I normally uninstall Mozy when I finds out the version I had does not work. I would report all my findings here and to Mozy Mac Technical Support, but this time around they did not reply as you had pointed out.

    So, I would recommend everyone to not rely on Mozy and choose the many other options for backup on your Mac.

    I have to reiterate, an online backup is just one of the pieces of a backup strategy. It should not be your only backup means.

    With the release of Leopard (Mac OS 10.5), Apple has made one method of backup much simply for the general user. For those who will or has upgraded to Mac OS 10.5, I suggest you take advantage of TimeMachine. Then look into software like SuperDupper as the other means of backing up your data/system.

    I will have an article about backup archiving in the near future.

  16. I’d have to agree with everything you say here Vinko. SuperDuper! is a great piece of software and has to count as one the must have apps for OS X. Having recently changed to 10.5 I can tell you its not yet fully compatible with leopard but I know they are working on it and a solution should be present soon. I have yet to try out Time Machine in Leopard but see no reason why it can’t be used in tandem with SuperDuper!
    My reason for wanting to use Mozy was for the off site storage over the internet but I just don’t see that as a viable alternative anymore and to be honest the whole experience has put me off trying with other companies because it just takes too long to upload a large amount of data and if the system becomes unreliable you are back to square one, so I still feel a fireproof safe with cheap SATA drives is the way forward for me personally. Systems like Mozy can work if you only need to backup a few gigs but as your needs increase it just doesn’t work unless you have a super fast upload connection and unlimited bandwidth. Try uploading 100 gigs of data and see how long it takes.

  17. I’d have to agree with everything you say here Vinko. SuperDuper! is a great piece of software and has to count as one the must have apps for OS X. Having recently changed to 10.5 I can tell you its not yet fully compatible with leopard but I know they are working on it and a solution should be present soon. I have yet to try out Time Machine in Leopard but see no reason why it can’t be used in tandem with SuperDuper!

    My reason for wanting to use Mozy was for the off site storage over the internet but I just don’t see that as a viable alternative anymore and to be honest the whole experience has put me off trying with other companies because it just takes too long to upload a large amount of data and if the system becomes unreliable you are back to square one, so I still feel a fireproof safe with cheap SATA drives is the way forward for me personally. Systems like Mozy can work if you only need to backup a few gigs but as your needs increase it just doesn’t work unless you have a super fast upload connection and unlimited bandwidth. Try uploading 100 gigs of data and see how long it takes.

  18. Actually, Mozy sent me a new version of Mozy for Macintosh last week. I have yet to test it but according to Mozy it is close to golden master (soon to be ready to be called v1.0).

    I recently (on the weekend) upgraded my Mac to Mac OS 10.5. So I want to make sure everything are stable before introducing yet another variable onto my Mac.

    Please do feel free to try this latest version [v0.8.0.0 (764)] out. I am sure everyone will appreciate it, if you can share your findings here.

  19. Thank you so much for this VERY informative (and a bit lengthy) article on Mozy. You can guess how and why I found you. :o(

    I’ve been using Mozy for awhile, maybe two months, maybe three. My wife has two machines at work on her account (PC) and I’ve been using it on my MacBook at home. All three machines are paid accounts. Support has been fairly responsive via email.

    I started using Mozy at home right after I upgraded to Leopard. My most recent issue was that Mozy just stopped making backups. It popped up an alert to let me know that it had not backed up in seven days. I thought, “So? Do a backup!” I tried to manually start one and it did nothing. The status window just sat there.

    So I attempted to uninstall and reinstall following their online directions to save my configuration file. And that is where I ran into a Catch22. When you install Mozy, it creates its directories and starts up a process, even before you configure it. That process uses the state.db file. So you can’t copy your old state.db file over to that directory because the file is in use. Thus, you can’t actually reinstall Mozy and USE your old configuration file! You can save it, just not use it, which is very frustrating.

    So I did a whole new setup and configuration, hoping that Mozy would be smart enough to compare my files with the ones on the server. Nope. It started a whole new backup, which will take at least another five hours according to the status window. It just started over as if my existing backup wasn’t there!

    I think it is this last round of problems that is causing me to look for other solutions, including my wife’s backups at work. It works most of the time but when it doesn’t the hassle factor just isn’t worth even $5/month

  20. I’ve been using Mozy for quite a few months on my Mac. I’ve had a few minor problems, but for a beta release, it’s been pretty good.

    I recently installed Mac OS 10.5 Leopard, and had a few problems with Mozy (v0.8.0.0). The backup daemon doesn’t start automatically, but if I run it from the command line, then everything works fine. Still haven’t traced down the problem and haven’t seen any mention of it elsewhere.

  21. Mozy 1.0.1.0 is still full of bugs in my opinion… I’ve paid for 2 years unlimited… It lost all my configuration after a couple of days and now after a 7day backup has completed it says its own config file is corrupt and I can’t do anything with it!

    Any ideas?

    There support people won’t even respond.

  22. Hi Levent,

    Sorry to hear of your troubles.

    Unfortunately, I had long given up on Mozy online backup for the Mac. My current backup set up is to use TimeMachine to back up to a TimeCapsule and then use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a image of my entire drive on an external Firewire drive.

    Since I have several Macs that I am backing up, I now have a Drobo on order.

    Did you send your email inquiry to their Mac Support (macsupport@mozy.com)? I found that in the past their Mac Support was much more responsive, but that was before EMC took over.

  23. I asked several straightforward questions from Mozy support prior to signing up and they wouldn’t answer them.

    My questions were:
    Do you back up my data to tape? How often?
    Do you mirror my data to another data center? How often?
    Do you use RAID 5 or RAID 6? (Raid 6 is important when using SATA disks)

    They wouldn’t answer any of them, they tried to dance around them but I wasn’t buying it.

    Another question about restores which I didn’t ask but should have…

    Does Mozy Throttle Bandwidth for restores and what Bandwidth do they have available to Mozy at the data center (Not the entire B/W of the Data Center, but what MOZY has available)

  24. These guys are complete idiots. Just by reading the log I can debug better than they can on their own product. Every single customer support tech I've emailed (many, since this thing broke like 10 times in the first week) should be fired. Their product is faulty, their representatives incompetent. I am looking for another low cost alternative, and if Google ever releases a competitive product I'm dumping this POS in a heartbeat.

  25. I understand your frustration, I had some issues at the beginning too (with the Mac version), however after a few emails back and forth with support, it was finally solved.Great updates too…

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