Mozy is in the news again after announcing a huge enterprise deal with General Electric last week. Today they’ve pushed a Mac version of their desktop backup solution for consumers. I’ve been using it for a week, and it’s extremely good.
Previously Mozy and competitor Carbonite were excellent ways of backing up Windows based hard drives. Both are very reasonably priced at about $60/year – Mozy allows 2 GB to be stored for free and charges $5/month for unlimited storage, while Carbonite has a 15 day free trial and then charges $5 per month with discounts for pre-payment. Neither charge for bandwidth.
With both solutions you download and install the software and the service then slowly begins to backup your hard drive based on your settings.
Carbonite still only supports XP (and is a great choice for Windows users). Mozy is the only choice for Mac users and I highly recommend it after my testing. You can make a simple request to back up up the entire hard drive, or get more granular and just back up, say, iTunes and iPhoto.
I use Carbonite, bought it from an ad on TechCrunch actually.
Can’t say enough good things about it. Has already saved me once big time after vista killed my computer.
Personally, I prefer my S3 account + S3fox. There is also JungleDisk for automated backups. Bandwagon DIY will be released this week so I’ll have my iTunes media on S3 as well. Not to mention I trust Amazon with my data more than anyone else.
I did try backing up my Mac using chronosync+jungledisk+S3 but obviously it is more complex than an integrated service. While I could take it, I don’t think I could impose that on my non-geek friends who ask me for Mac advice.
So, very good news, and thanks Mozy, I’m going to try this ASAP !
I used Carbonite before I switched to a Mac and Carbonite was terrific…seamless, easy, well priced. I missed it when I switched but got on board with Mozy’s Mac beta a few weeks ago…it’s terrific too and I’ll be sticking with it.
Cool! I have been using SuperDuper to make an exact copy of my Hadrdisk every day. If I lose my MacBook pro I can just buy a new one, attach the HD and the new MacBook Pro would copy everything.
But what if I’m out for lunch and both the laptop AND Harddisk would be stolen? I do have a Terabyte HD at home but I only back-up there once a month.
Mozy sounds like an excellent remote back-up solution. Going to test it now.
What do you guys do to get this to work?? The configuration wizard reproducibly crashes every time I run it during the file-choosing phase. Mozy support hasn’t gotten back to me about this yet. I mean, I’d love to use this software but I can’t even get it to do the first backup…
The only good backup solution? Super-Duper works great!
I’ve been using the Mac Beta for the last three months. Initially it was quite buggy and caused the load to spike every so often. The latest beta – 0.4.0.9, seems to have solved those initial issues I had. Mozy mac support has also been quite helpful so far.
I have Carbonite installed on my other laptop, and I can almost definitively say that both Mozy and Carbonite’s offerings are at par with each other and vary only very slightly.
Remember Mac Mozy is still in Beta, so it may still have some unsolved issues. I love it – and I can sleep knowing my MacBook Pro is backed up.
I’m also a big SuperDuper! fan. Having a bootable copy of my machine on hand has saved my butt more than once. I also use SuperDuper to replicate all my stored photos and music between two 600GB lacie drives.
Mozy looks like it might be a nice off-site incremental tool, however…I’ll have to check it out. So far, I’ve been sticking to “check important stuff into subversion” and everything else is an acceptable loss until my next weekly superduper.
Can’t quite understand the hype here. Streamload’s MediaMax XL is FREE and provides 25 gb of storage. It syncs and backs up fine. You can also retrieve up to 100 mb per month for free. Why pay for storage anyway? Just pay when you need to retrieve it (if ever).
I just started using and it rocks. Very easy to use, and affordable as far as I’m concerned.
I’ve been using Mozy for Mac in beta for about two months and have had no issues. I used Mozy on my Win XP laptop and now my MacBook Pro and its been incredibly smooth. Fortunately, I’ve not yet had the opportunity to try a recovery…
Unfortunately the current Mac version only works if you are running on your system with admin priviledges….
I have ove a Terabyte of data. How long would this service take to back that up?
Some basic questions:
1. Time for initial backup would be long (I think)
2. After (1) year $60 you could have bought a on-site external HD.
3. To restore the whole computer (30-40 gig) worth of files could take major time.
– This is a great solution / probably beats the hell out of xdrive and all. But its more practical for throwing files (1-3)gigs / mo .. to other teams working.
I have downloaded it, but after a lentghy scan I click save configuration and the app quits without warning.
I can’t seem to instigate a back up either.
Does Mozy have to be running for the backup to take place?
You might also want to take a look at Crashplan – http://www.crashplan.com.
It provides a very-well-thought-out interface, and works with Mac and Windows (and soon with Linux as well). It’s fairly innovative because you can not only back up to THEIR servers, but back up to a friend’s PC or one of your other computers as well. I’ve been using it for a few weeks and have been impressed.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for Michael Arrington and Mozy. So while I am critical of the the statement “First Really Useful Mac Hard Drive Backup Solution”, I’m not being critical of Michael or Mozy.
Michael has a hard hitting “tell me the numbers” style. I greatly enjoy his podcasts.
While Mozy isn’t the first, it’s clearly one of the best online solutions out there on MS Windows. Kudos to GE for thinking outside the box on backup.
My point is this: there are several other really useful products out there that are reliable, easy to use, and quite innovative.
One example is ShirtPocket Software’s SuperDuper. It rocks the house technically while remaining very easy to use.
What to consider when backing up a Mac is covered brilliantly by Joe Kissel in his book “Take Control of Mac OS X Backups”.
Just trying to balance the hype a bit.
disclaimer: I do compete with Mozy.
How do you back up hidden files with Mozy? None of the top-level directories like /usr are visible in their file/folder selection tab…
pallet jack:
True that for the 60$ (depending on sales taxes in the part of the world you live in – 25% here in Denmark
) you can have an onsite external HD.
But speaking as a person who just had his laptop, camera etc. stolen by a burglar – onsite backup is only usable when nothing happens to that external drive (or the source). I was lucky – the burglar only took my laptop (powerbook used when playing WOW or when watching TV (ie wife time)), but had the burglar taken my workstation and home server – I would not have pictures of my son (10 months old), or the data I have gathered over the years – for this an online service is needed and 60$ is so cheap that I feel that I cannot afford not to sign up for that service – and having tried the free version for a few days it’s a no brainer.
I believe that what mozy is doing is very clever, because in a few years people will have so much stuff (crap?) on their home PCs that they value more than anything else. Then backup is a thing that you just have to do, and with a starting price like this – mozy will be amongst the marked leaders (just waiting for that call from Google)
ditto what peter said. Sure, external HDD’s are cheap, but the whole point of this is to have OFF-site backup. I did not like carbonite because you couldn’t use your own encryption key (from when I tried it, maybe it has changed now) and it seemed really buggy at the time.
Mozy claims to do differentials on the bit level, but I have yet to see that be proven. On the windows version, it didn’t seem to work that way.
However, glad to see a mac client. I could use the free 2GB for some of my files. Although, I don’t think unlimited is truly unlimited. If I remember correctly, some folks who were on carbonite who had uploaded quite a bit of media were kicked off (like in the vicinity of 200GB). Can anyone confirm the truth to this?
Linh
the unlimited is just a theory – most PC’s have 100GB to 200Gb harddrives out of that perhaps 10-20 GB is worth of backing up – and most people will end up backing up less than that (at current levels) so it’s easy to give unlimited space just due to the fact that most people really don’t need that much space in reality.
Anyone know or has found the maximum upload file size on the free account?
Use this registration code “X7D94N” when you sign up and get an extra 256 Mb of space.
I have been using it for over a week now. Great service
X7D94N
This sounds great and I have just signed up. Unlimited storage for £2.50 a month (you gotta love the pound!) sounds too good to be true. Thanks for the tip off.
Been using Carbonite on my Windows desktop after 1 month of my 3 month free trial because it was just THAT good. Right now I have 80GB of data backed up with them.
As for Mozy…we’ll see how well this works, but I imagine I’ll stick with S3 for my mac backups though.
Before this could be considered a useful backup utility at all, the question needs to be asked, “Is there an easy (GUI) GnuPG file-encryption tool for Mac?” Sending your personal files to who-knows-where with whatever they define as encryption seems like a bad idea to me. In order for me to trust such a utility, I’d need to make sure my files are GnuPG-encrypted *before* going on the wire… and I don’t think most average users are comfortable in Terminal.
Recently, I found a wealth of information about online backup and storage at the following website.
BackupReview.info
Mozy is ranked at #4 for this month out of 400 online backup companies.
I’ll second a vote for CrashPlan. Does what Mozy does, and MUCH more importantly, you can choose to backup to friends’ PCs, instead of CrashPlan servers.
I’ve been testing it out for awhile now, and have been pretty happy with it. And Matthew has personally responded on the few occasions that I was having trouble, or had any questions about it.
Mike, it appears a whole bunch of comments disappeared – those discussing locked outlook.pst, byte-level backup, multiple locations ..etc.
Mozy is hands-down the best backup software out there – for consumers and small businesses. Mozy is a bit pricey, but way out-hits Carbonite and similar products in the featureset department.
yeah, Mozy is pretty sweet. Use ACHS45 for a promocode and get an extra 256 MB!
I’ve been using the Mac Mozy beta for a few weeks, really like it. Was a carbonite user on my Dell for almost a year, wish they had gotten the Mac beta started.
Mako,
It is hard to do differential backups and byte-level encryption at the same time. Companies like carbonite and mozy can get away with “unlimited” backups because they reap the benefits of single-instance storage (e.g. only one copy of apps and OS files that are bit-for-bit identical between two random boxes) while you get charged for each bit you send. When you start dealing with encryption you have to ask interesting questions:
-what key (if it is user-supplied you blow the single-instance benefit and UI is a PITA, if it is based on a hash of the file then when a single bit in the file changes a new encryption key is generated so you lose single-instance storage and have to upload the entire file again)
-what cipher mode (with ECB mode you can only backup the differential bits but ECB is trivial to crack, with a chained mode like CBC or CTR then changing a bit means that everything after the block in which the bit was flipped with encrypt to something new and you lose the efficiencies of central storage, etc.)
-what is the threat model (there are some less well-known mechanisms that let you protect files from some junior sysadmin at the service provider, but making the service both cost-effective to the provider and secure enough for the truly paranoid is both hard and expensive.)
There are ways to do this securely, usually by separating the bits that are files from the bits that describe which files belong to which users and protecting the latter, but it is hard and you end up eating into the margins of the service provider because doing backups like this in a manner that is secure from both service provider collusion and random subpeonas requires more storage and more bandwidth.
I’m thinking of signing up for one of the online backup solutions. However, there isn’t much information on the providers’ infrastructure or backup plan of their own.
Do they keep backups of the user data at multiple sites? Is my data replicated to other servers? I’d hate to upload my data only to find my data was housed on a single hard drive in a single server in their single data center. It would be nice if the provider sites noted such information.
I’ve just downloaded MacMozy but I can’t backup attached hard drives (where all my photos reside). Has anyone figured out a way to do this, until they officially add that functionality?
I’ve been using the earlier mac betas for awhile and found it quit buggy. But the release they put out for the public beta, version 0.4.1.1 has been solid. My biggest concern is that the restores are done via a web download only (unlike the Windows version). If it necessary to do some bug restores the files are combined into large DMG files. The Mozy server deletes them when it thinks you downloaded them which could make fore some frustrating times if you have download problems.
To get 256 MB extra space, use this!!
https://mozy.com/?ref=GC3VCG
Mozy ist just a great backup-system. I first used it for my private computer.
Now, with being able to synchronize with Apple, we will probably take it for business as well.
Mozy – all the best!
I searched from the net and found a name Ahsay, which apparently can do Mac backup. http://www.ahsa...oducts_obm.html
Be aware: on my MacBook Pro Mozy got in a loop and began writing an ever expanding log file, filling space as quickly as I could clear it while trying to find the problem (hard to do anything with Zero Kb on my HDD!).
It got to 22Gb before I identified it as the problem, Force Quitted Mozy and deleted the file (/private/var/log/mozy.log). I’m a bit techie, possibly your average punter wouldn’t have been able to identify this.
Yes I have mailed them too.
Got a problem here too. In my iMac Mozy the first run was in a loooooooooong looop when indexing Office documents (and I really don’t have that many documents). After a force quit and relaunch, mozy took some more time and started ok. The next time, there was the loong infinite loop again. I didn’t notice the Disk space dropping, though.
If you need a working mozy promo code to gain the extra 256 mb you may use this url: https://mozy.com/?ref=Q4AGBK (you’ll get this extra backup space after your first backup).
Funny thing with Mac Mozy – I tried to back up ~40GB, but it would never get beyond ~25 GB before reverting to “Verifying…” with the hard drive monitor showing constant read/write. The reported storage on mozy.com would drop from ~25GB to under 1GB and slowly climb as it “verified” (Send bit rate = 0 kb/s), but after many weeks it could not complete the backup set. It just kept repeating this cycle. I canceled. Too bad. No-brainer offsite backup would be ideal.
avea parça kontör
with being able to synchronize with Apple
However, glad to see a mac client. I could use the free 2GB for some of my files. Although, I don’t think unlimited is truly unlimited. If I remember correctly, some folks who were on carbonite who had uploaded quite a bit of media were kicked off (like in the vicinity of 200GB). Can anyone confirm the truth to this? allcarpictures.net
Teşekkür
Mozy ist just a great backup-system. I first used it for my private computer.
Now, with being able to synchronize with Apple, we will probably take it for business as well.
hatalı yazım
egnyte is another cool alternative that works great on PC, Mac, iphone, netbooks. I did their demo.
http://www.egnyte.com/