Has anyone done a full Restore from Mozy?

[maryinaz]

My main computer hard drive crashed last week. I have Mozy, but for some unfortunate reason, it hadn't backed up since Dec. 1. It told me a couple of times there hadn't been a backup for 7 days so I restarted it manually. Guess that didn't work.

Anyway, so now I have a new hard drive and went to restore all my files. They are saying anything over 20GB will be a very slow restore and are recommending DVD Restore. For just a small sum of $120.95 (they charge PER GB plus other fees)!! What???

So has anyone done a big restore from them? I've got 101 GB on there and just decided to go ahead and try the web restore and see how long it takes. If this is really way too slow and I have to spend the money for a DVD restore, I will have to find somewhere else for backup. It's very misleading to think it's only $60 a year...because that seems to be only IF nothing happens.

I also don't see my emails in my list of files. I had thousands of emails from as much as 10 years ago saved in over 50 folders. I will be so sick if I've lost all of them.

[rach3975]

Oh, no--I hope the web restore works and you didn't lose your emails. I've only done small restores from Mozy, so I'm no help. When I signed up I remember that it was only $60 to get the DVDs. That seemed reasonable to me, but $120 is way too much!

[Kim Mauch]

I did a off line restore this summer and it was around $250! I could not even get the web restore to work on my computer. I had no idea I would be charged a per gigi byte price to restore my data, and on top of that, it took almost two months for mozy to respond and help me with my problem. The ONLY good things were: I got all of my data back and I got it sent to me on a 300 gb EHD at no extra charge.
At that point, I was just happy that my stuff was back in my hands.

Good luck, I hope this works out in your favor.

Please message me if you have any trouble dealing with Mozy. I have a couple of different resources to contact them, after all of my troubles.
Kim

[maryinaz]

Well, they got the 101 GB to me overnight, but it's in 29 files that I have to download one at a time, and each one will take hours. This is NOT what I expected and I'm not happy at all. I was expected this to all run in the background on its own. Plus, oh yeah, they kept email, only it was my Thunderbird email that I only use for work, not my Windows Mail that is personal. That is so stupid!

I'll be checking out and switching to Carbonite as soon as I'm through this mess.

The DVD Restore is $30 for the DVD, then you have to pay for FedEx overnight shipping, and then a fee per GB. Mine came to $120, but if you have more than 101 GB, it would be more.

[DawnMarch]

I did an online restore once and don't recall any problems, though it did take a while. When you say they only kept one kind of e-mail, isn't Mozy set up so that the user designates what is saved?

[maryinaz]

I went with their suggestions and it said "Email and Contacts" without specifying which. It chose Thunderbird and I didn't realize it. It never even occured to me that it would choose that.

[Nettio]

I haven't tried to do a restore but I've been having issues with just getting Mozy to backup for months now. But when I was digging around to see if anyone else was having problems, I did come across a lot of complaints related to their restore process. Either it taking a really really long time or it not even restoring at all.

Personally, I don't think Mozy was ever intended or should be used as a primary backup, especially when you start getting up into the many many GB backups. It's really designed to be a secondary backup in the event that your primary backup is destroyed (like say a fire or flood) which in that case having an offsite backup is necessary. But I think most people are much better off primarily backing up to an EHD that is easily accessible should your drive crash. Downloading 100+GB is simply going to take a LONG time.

And as far as the cost, I think most people who have spent $1000+ to have their drives restored will tell you that $120 is a bargain. But then for that same price you could have backed up your files to an EHD and already have them restored. :D

[pkstew2]

Just thought I'd whine on here as a reminder to not only backup often but make sure you are backing up somewhere you can restore easily from. You gals are geniuses that use multiple EHDs instead of an online service. Note to self :)

Kim M - I'm PMing you in hopes you have some Mozy contacts to share?

My hard drive crashed and my DH is checking on it getting fixed but in the meantime he was sweet enough to let me get a new one. I have never had any problems getting my stuff backed up to Mozy. I also use an EHD for my digi stuff and pix but have gotten lazy about backing up my outlook and other daily files to it and count on Mozy. Well here I sit in need of a restore. The system kept hanging up on me on "choose files to restore" so I can't even look at the files I have backed up, nor choose the ones I'd want for a web or DVD restore. Crazy!!!!

Thanks for listening :)

[Nettio]

Sorry to hear you're having trouble with Mozy too.

I recommend telling the customer service rep that you want to "escalate" your complaint. I sent several emails back and forth with a rep who very clearly wasn't even bothering to read my emails, so I told them I didn't want to deal with them anymore and to please escalate my problem to someone who actually cared. Next thing I know I'm getting emails from a tech who was very very helpful and spent over a month trying to figure out how to fix my problem. The email address shows as escalations@mozy.com so I think that might be the key.

[pkstew2]

Wow thanks Lynette. I'm hoping it will all work out. Again I'm whining, and I do want to say i've never had problems backing up to Mozy and my EHD gets backed up fine too so I don't want to badmouth them. I just want my files back :)

[Susan Bartolini]

Honestly, I haven't heard great things about Mozy. Lots of online reviews rank them as poor for the exact reason you are experiencing.

I researched Backblaze (who got good reviews) and that is who I am using now.

I hope you are able to get all your data.

Susan

[Jengerbread88]

I have never tried Mozy, but just to let you know, I personally have two EHDs.

I keep ALL of my kits on both of them (I copy new kits I've purchased to a new kit folder and copy it over once a week, so I guess if I lost it mid-week, I'd have lost those kits... but... well, that wouldn't be TOO much to lose).

I try to transfer photos over 2x per month, but that takes awhile sometimes!

I keep any font files I would want to keep, on my EHDs. It'd suck to have to go through and hunt them all down again.

So that's where I back everything up. Lol.

[jannylynn]

I hate Mozy. So if you love them, you don't want to read my post. I actually used them for about 9 months without a problem. Then they stopped backing-up my stuff and the program didn't pop-up to tell me. They said it was a windows problem but DH works for MS and contacted them telling them that their software shuts down some function in windows. He found documentation of it on the web, too. They told me to use an older version of Mozy instead because they weren't going to fix the problem. I was mad! I had been paying them for 3 months without even 1 file backed up. Customer service was NOT helpful and never did give me a refund. They said that I had files in storage and available during that time.

I switched to backblaze. They charge $99 for a DVD restore. Download is free. I'm glad that I checked on that because I didn't know what it cost for restore except that download is free. So now I know that may be a possibility if something goes wrong. I guess that is standard. ???

And I thought about just backing-up to EHD. (and actually, I do that too.) But I know someone that lost their entire system in a bad lightening storm. I was thinking what if something like that (or worse) happened? I want my files off-site. It isn't just pictures and digi-stuff. We use the computer for so much!

[maryinaz]

I started this thread - was surprised to see it pop up! ;)

I did get everything restored from Mozy except my 10 years of emails...which I'm still mourning. It wasn't all that difficult to restore it. I had purchased Mozy for a year, which is coming up soon and then I need to decide if I want to renew with them or switch to Carbonite or something else.

I also keep my pictures/layouts/digi-scrapping stuff on an EHD, but I still want that online backup. If my house burned down, at least I would have the comfort of my stuff being saved. :)

[cvharris]

I did a full restore from Mozy completely online. Around 200 gigs. It took me two full weeks and tons of hours to download everything back on my computer. This was back in September of last year. You need to be patient and really organized when doing it - stuff is everywhere. All my photos were saved, and just a few kits came over a little wonky but otherwise all was good.

Lynette is right that it isn't designed to be your primary backup. You should have a local backup (EHD) and only rely on it for the stuff that you need that you had after your last local backup.

[pkstew2]

Just thought I'd send a quick update...daily reminders to back up wouldn't hurt either :) Mozy has now been very responsive in my inquiries - they had some kind of server problem over the weekend. I have been requesting small manageable restore downloads via the web and it's going fine. The only problem has been with my Outlook file and that restore pooped out on their end so they say they're manually building it for me? Again, so silly that I didn't have that backed up locally to an EHD. And I agree you have to have some kind of "in case of fire" off site backup. I just read somewhere on the web an idea of keeping 1 of your 2 EHDs at someone else's house and just rotating those out each time you visit. I'm thinking of doing this with my MIL who's close by.

I still want to check into Backblaze as an alternative but again wanted to at least say something positive about Mozy. :)

[scrapmommaof3]

I am so glad some of you have had success with backblaze, because I just signed up through them. thanks for the info everyone!

[ColleenSwerb]

Yea, I have 3 EHD's and I keep 1 of them at work and update it randomly. Of the 2 EHD's that stay home, only one is plugged in 24/7. The other is only plugged in when I'm updating it. Plus we use a battery backup system for our electronics (not useful for a lightening storm, but prevents issues with surges and brownouts and stuff, which we actually experience quite often).

[pkstew2]

Okay I had to pop back in and give praise to Mozy. They have been in constant daily contact with me regarding getting my Outlook file rebuilt for a web restore. In the meantime, I had continued to download my stuff in small increments that the web restore would handle. Of course I was only looking for stuff that wasn't backed up to my local EHD. Well guess what....we just finished some major reconstruction and our office isn't quite back together. Well last weekend within a week of my hard drive dying, I accidentally kicked over the EHD that was on the floor (hardwoods) and it died immediately. Okay only you girls can relate to how much I freaked out. I thought I was going to throw up. All our family photos not to mention everything else. I was hysterical my DH thought something had happened to our children. He kept telling me "its just stuff"..."our family is safe". And then told me that he had brought home a new wireless EHD just the night before but it wasn't set up yet - UGGGG!

So, he's much more rational and was just like go to Mozy and request a full restore on DVD no matter what the cost if it will calm you down. So you gals know how fast I ran to the computer (luckily we had another one that worked). So for a $30 processing fee, $40 fed ex next day (so $70 flat fee before you start counting files), and $0.50 gig (mine was 90gig) my total was $116. Now had I known that I would've requested it when my hard drive first died and before the EHD died. And this included my sought-after Outlook file that alone was 1gig (gotta get better at deleting files permanently). I ordered it Saturday and rec'd it today. They sent it on a 250 gig portable hard drive. So, now I have my "stuff" back and am copying it over (file system just as it was on my old hard drive) and I am one happy camper! Thanks to that $4.95 monthly payment to Mozy.

I'm still looking into another service and certainly using more EHDs and have learned a great lesson about backing up, but I have to at least praise Mozy for doing what their service is supposed to do :thumbup: