My Mozy review: know its limits before you need it

I’ve been using Mozy, the online backup service, since September 2007, but it was only in the beginning of May that I had the unfortunate opportunity to really try it out. I’ve mentioned that I suffered a hard drive crash just before my final exams. During the next week or so, I did recover enough from Mozy to get back on my feet, but it wasn’t all I had expected. I’ve revised my expectations of the service downward, but at the price, I think it’s decent for what it does. If you know what to expect, Mozy might be the right online backup app for your needs.

Problems

Let me walk through exactly what happened when my drive crashed. First, of course, was the freak-out. Let me point out that a dead hard drive will put you in a pretty sour mood in any situation, and all the more so if you’ve lost your primary computer at a crucial moment This isn’t relevant to Mozy, precisely, but it’s worth noting as context for the next step: the first restore.

I knew that I’d need my data fast (I had outlines partially completed, for one thing), and I knew that downloading several gigabytes from Mozy would take forever. So, I resolved right from the start to order DVDs. See, for restores, Mozy offers the option of burning your data onto optical media and expediting them to your doorstep. Unfortunately, there were two problems with this method:

1. It costs money. I paid $75.95 to have three DVDs overnighted to me by FedEx. This, on top of the $54.45/year I’d already paid to store an unlimited amount in the first place. Probably, had I been thinking rationally, I would have downloaded the documents I needed for my upcoming exams, and assessed the situation after they were out of the way to see whether I really needed to pay for my system files, preferences, and the rest. Of course, when your drive dies, you’re not thinking rationally — that’s how they getcha.
2. The online tool to select what files I wanted burned and mailed was broken. This led to my first experience with Mozy’s tech support.

I’d gone to a public computer to put my restore order in. When I realized it wasn’t working, I immediately called the first tech support number I saw. Unfortunately, after I read the rep my customer number, he told me that he couldn’t help — phone support is only for business customers. Fine. He directed me to their online chat system, for we $50/year plebes. I connected with another service rep, who quickly made clear that he or she was following a script and wasn’t interested in deviating. I described the problems I encountered with the file selection tool online (unresponsive script, ever-spinning progress indicator). The rep gave no sign he comprehended this at all; finally vanishing for at least five minutes. When he returned, his spelling had improved immensely, and he seemed to have forgotten everything I’d just told him. Anyway, halfway through explaining my plight to the new guy, the tool blinked and displayed my files (for future reference, I think it just hangs for 20 minutes or so on big backups). So, I continued.

I can’t fault Mozy for their communications after I put my DVD order in. Not only did I get a receipt, but they also sent a shipment notification with a tracking number, and an arrival message. Unfortunately, the shipping notification came a full day after I put my order in. I imagine there’s a queue for the still-laggardly DVD burners, but still — I’m paying $76 for overnight delivery.

By the time the DVDs had arrived, my dad had overnighted me his old Toshiba laptop (fortunately, his turnaround time is about an hour), and I eagerly pulled my law school stuff from them to work on. When my MacBook came back from the shop, though, copying my files back was a different story.

Now, let me say up front that part of my problem here was an unrealistic expectation about how Mac restores work. I know that all the user preferences live in ~/Library/, but I couldn’t help backing up all kinds of system folders as well. I thought that I had the same machine as before, so simply copying the old files over the new system-wide would bring me back up and running like my old drive had never died. It didn’t, of course, and an hour later I’d reinstalled Leopard and was ready to try again. This time, I checked the files as I was moving them onto my hard drive. Oddly, the permissions on every file had been reset to read-only. This might have been Mozy’s fault (apparently Mac backup software struggles with metadata) or it might have been mine (maybe reinstalling my OS changed my user account), but it was very annoying to have to piece everything back into place and then modify permissions by hand.

Mac users with more experience than I will note be surprised to learn that overwriting my system files still didn’t work. After another reinstall, I gave up, and started installing my programs by hand, then copying over user preferences with corrected permissions.

Moving on

A good backup experience is like a good plane landing: it’s any one you can walk away from. I walked away from this one with most of my data, but a much better idea of what to expect from Mozy and how I’d continue to use it in the future.

Mozy’s big draw is obviously twofold. First, it backs up your data offsite; second, it does this automatically and incrementally. On the other hand, it’s not a complete backup solution. First, I don’t care if they do offer an unlimited storage plan, you’re not going to have a good time backing up 40GB over the wire. Not only will it take forever to get there, but once they’ve got it, they can essentially ransom it to you (I didn’t even try to download my data en masse, but that’s in part because I’d heard that Mozy struggles with even smaller downloads). Apart from that, my experience should show that you can’t treat file-by-file backups as a drag-and-drop solution at the deep system level.

Instead, I plan to keep using Mozy by taking advantage of its strengths, and complementing its weaknesses. I’ve got some irreplaceable stuff on my hard drive, and a lot of it changes daily. Thus, I’m happy to back up my important data — documents, preferences, etc. — incrementally. For me, and probably for you too, the stuff that really does change frequently is small (individual documents, for instance), and the big stuff (photos, primarily) is just a one-time push.

At the same time I’ve discovered that irreplaceables alone don’t constitute a complete backup. Especially when deadlines loom, there’s a lot to be said for a bootable restore option, and Mozy ain’t it. I haven’t moved into my new place yet, but when I do, I intend to supplement Mozy’s online backups with a more conventional image dump to a hard drive sitting next to my desk. This will take a while, so I’ll probably only schedule it weekly, but it’ll also allow me to simply Ghost the image onto my new laptop drive and boot up as normal. If my documents are a few days out of date, Mozy can retrieve the most recent versions.

I’ve got several smaller complaints about Mozy as a piece of software (for instance, automatic updates still don’t work, plugging in an Ethernet cable terminates my uploads, and their tech support on both these issues still sucks), but when it works, the service it provides is just so useful that I can keep justifying the $50/year price tag. I hope it continues to improve, but right now Mozy will stay a part of my backup plan.