[scratt]

I guess most of you have heard that Mozy now gives 2GB of storage and has an OS X 10.4 piece of client sofftware now...

It's still in Beta, but I have signed up, and I think that really is about it for .Mac for me now..

https://mozy.com/

Note - If you use my link above I get some extra space in my account for referring you. If anyone wants Joost invites, or Gmail accounts, or for me to get someone else to register through your account (once you have it set up) so you can benefit also, just PM me.

[jdcfsu]

At $5 a month, unlimited storage is a pretty solid option. Doesn't beat an external drive IMO, but it seems like a pretty nice safeguard.

[Banana]

I like this.

Alternatives to Mozy Burn a new CD or DVD every Sunday night and store them at your brother-in-law's office. Pay $200/year for an online backup service that uses old, mediocre software. Buy a $200 external hard drive and hope your office doesn't burn down. Do nothing and don't worry about backup. (We suggest closing your eyes, plugging your ears and repeating "I'm in my happy place, I'm in my happy place.") Run a cron job of rsync, gzip and mcrypt piped over ssh to your friend's server over his DSL line. Of course, we think Mozy is the best and easiest solution to the backup problem!

[Wyatt]

I signed up for a free account, but I haven't gotten my e-mail confirmation yet.

[scratt]

Mine took about 5 minutes...

[Enki]

Originally Posted by fcgriz I signed up for a free account, but I haven't gotten my e-mail confirmation yet.

Check you junk mail.

[JK47]

Excellent, just what I wanted...a tiny program to backup my mail messages, iCal, Address Book, etc....

Too bad it doesn't backup Safari bookmarks though.

[torifile]

I just installed it and I wish I could just tell it what to backup rather than have it try to figure out what I want. But who can complain about free?

[macleod]

So how secure are these backup solutions? Is my data safe if it may have personal information like ssn# or credit card numbers?

[JK47]

Originally Posted by macleod So how secure are these backup solutions? Is my data safe if it may have personal information like ssn# or credit card numbers?

Well, you can choose your own encryption key if you wish. Otherwise, just use the key Mozy provides.

[Maciej]

I look forward to getting some experience on it, cheers!

[Mugge]

Apart from back-up I don't see a of of similarity feature-wise with .mac.

But yeah, .mac could use a price cut and some extra space.

[chucker]

I've been privately beta testing this for a while. The mozy team even found a blog entry of mine and responded to it via e-mail. Clearly, they're very interested in feedback.

The Mac client is also everything but a shoddy port. The status window is a Cocoa app, the daemon uses launchd, and so on. Good stuff.

There were some minor bugs in the version before yesterday, but maybe those are gone by now. One thing I'd like to see is for it to support .mac Backup 3's quick picks format. Should be fairly straightforward to implement. Also, the Windows version can mount your backups as a network drive (through WebDAV, I believe), so you can restore stuff through drag and drop in the Finder, and I wish the Mac version would let you do that as well.

Originally Posted by jdcfsu Doesn't beat an external drive IMO, but it seems like a pretty nice safeguard.

I look at it as an extension rather than an alternative to a clone on an external drive. Whereas – say, with SuperDuper! – you can have your complete boot partition backed up on an external drive, and can indeed even boot from it in emergencies to have a near-perfect clone, with very fast restore speeds as well, that doesn't give you the ability to look back at older versions of files. On the other hand, Mozy only archives specific files, and restoring is slow, but it truly is an archive: you can go back to older versions, much like in Time Machine (though without the crazy-snazzy interface and API).

Originally Posted by torifile I just installed it and I wish I could just tell it what to backup rather than have it try to figure out what I want.

From the status item, pick Configure Mozy…

When the main app is up and running, you should see a tab called "Backup Sets", and another "Files and Folders". You can simply hop over to that one and browse your file system just like in Finder's Column View. When you select individual items, there'll be an appropriate checkbox underneath.

So unless I understood your question wrong, you indeed can tell it exactly what to backup.

[Banana]

Hm.

I'm confused.

It won't let me select folders in Backup Sets. Opening a folder and saving the Backup Set doesn't add it to the list. File and Folders tab gives me a blank column.

How exactly do I tell it to backup a certain folder?

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Banana File and Folders tab gives me a blank column.

Try pressing the left arrow key. To me, the tab normally starts out at my home directory, though I can navigate all across the file system (though it appears other volumes aren't supported yet).

[torifile]

Originally Posted by chucker So unless I understood your question wrong, you indeed can tell it exactly what to backup.

You're understanding it right, but I was talking about the initial setup. It just took a long time at startup (and it appears that it does it on every launch).

A couple problems with the client:
1) its one of those apps that gets lost. IOW, I can't find it now because there's no dock icon and it's buried behind some windows.
2) It doesn't follow aliases. I've got my iPhoto library in my "Shared" users directory, with an alias in my Pictures folder. It doesn't see it.
3) It doesn't do networked iTunes libraries, either. My iTunes music is on a networked drive with an alias where it would be. No go there either.
4) I couldn't pick anything outside of my startup HD to backup. None of my other drives showed up at all.

I'll email these as feedback when I get a chance.

[chucker]

At the risk of sounding like an astroturfer (I'm not even a paying customer!):

Originally Posted by torifile 1) its one of those apps that gets lost. IOW, I can't find it now because there's no dock icon and it's buried behind some windows.

The main app does have a Dock icon. The status app doesn't, but its only normal window (the status window) can be pulled up through the status item's menu.

4) I couldn't pick anything outside of my startup HD to backup.

Not in Files and Folders, but you can create a new Backup Set and get there that way. + button, then Browse… Haven't tried it, but I assume that'll do.

[Banana]

Originally Posted by chucker Try pressing the left arrow key. To me, the tab normally starts out at my home directory, though I can navigate all across the file system (though it appears other volumes aren't supported yet).

No dice.



This is what I have.

Backup Set can navigate through directories, but doesn't seem to let me select a file to back up (can't multi-select).

So, yeah, I'm confused.

[julesstoop]

When you select a folder - say "Documents" - as a backup set, the mozy client doesn't seem to correctly recognize .pages files (which are indeed packages/folders, but behave as files in OS X) as files and seems to think they have no file size at all.
I haven't tried actually backing them up yet though.

edit:
Doesn't back them up either.
Why does uploading take about 100% cpu cycles? Is this the encryption at work? I originaly suspected that this would be done at the preparing stage, but I'm obviously wrong.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Banana No dice. This is what I have. Backup Set can navigate through directories, but doesn't seem to let me select a file to back up (can't multi-select). So, yeah, I'm confused.

Odd bug.

[Banana]

All righty.

Re-installed the app and still have blank list... What else could I try?

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Banana All righty. Re-installed the app and still have blank list... What else could I try?

Uh. Hm. Repair permissions? Check /var/log/mozy.log?

[Banana]

Permissions were repaired.

I couldn't find mozy.log; what is the full path?

[chucker]

I gave you the full path. In Finder, use cmd-shift-G to type in "/var/log", and you should find mozy.log in there.

[Banana]

Cool tip; will remember to use "Go to".

Anyway the log:

2007-04-27 02:17:44.537 MozyBackup[826] Starting Mozy Watcher... 2007-04-27 02:17:44.538 MozyBackup[826] Starting Scan Cache Updater... 2007-04-27 02:17:44.546 MozyBackup[826] MozyWatcher configured, now watching. 2007-04-27 02:17:44.549 MozyBackup[826] ScanCacheUpdater starting. 2007-04-27 02:17:44.550 MozyBackup[826] Starting Backup Service... 2007-04-27 02:17:44.572 MozyBackup[826] (service) Scheduling backup for 2007-04-27 04:17:43 -0700 2007-04-27 03:35:00.700 MozyBackup[826] SIGTERM/INT received, shutting down cleanly... 2007-04-27 03:35:00.793 MozyBackup[826] ScanCacheUpdater exiting. 2007-04-27 03:35:02.864 MozyBackup[826] MozyWatcher exiting. 2007-04-27 03:35:44.061 MozyBackup[911] Starting Mozy Watcher... 2007-04-27 03:35:44.061 MozyBackup[911] Starting Scan Cache Updater... 2007-04-27 03:35:44.066 MozyBackup[911] Starting Backup Service... 2007-04-27 03:35:44.068 MozyBackup[911] MozyWatcher configured, now watching. 2007-04-27 03:35:44.068 MozyBackup[911] ScanCacheUpdater starting. 2007-04-27 03:35:44.076 MozyBackup[911] (service) Scheduling backup for 2007-04-27 05:35:43 -0700

Nothing odd here, no?

[chucker]

Nope, not really. Maybe a mention in console.log or system.log?

(I'm pretty much running against a wall here. I just don't know the client well enough. Are you perhaps using a non-admin user? Maybe that affects things.)

[Banana]

Jackpot!

You were spot on about non-admin user. It seems that I do need to switch over to admin account in order to get it to run correctly. Unlike my first attempt, Mozy actually did scan through Backup Set on startup, looking through a particular type of files; that didn't happen first time.

Mozy kept crashing during scan, so I'll give it another install within admin account later. I'm done troubleshooting for now, though.

A bit confusing, considering that it does correctly prompts for admin's priliveges during the install but doesn't do so during the scan (which I don't think require any admin prilivege, correct?) Is this unusual?

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Banana Jackpot! You were spot on about non-admin user.

I was afraid that would be the case. I certainly hope Mozy considers that a bug.

A bit confusing, considering that it does correctly prompts for admin's priliveges during the install but doesn't do so during the scan (which I don't think require any admin prilivege, correct?) Is this unusual?

Perhaps the LaunchDaemon isn't being set up correctly when you're not an admin user.

[Jason]

Without sounding like an idiot, where is the restore button? Am I missing something?

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Jason Without sounding like an idiot, where is the restore button? Am I missing something?

Mac users can currently only restore through the web interface.

https://mozy.com/restore will populate a hierarchy of files that have been backed up, with popup menus to select the machine and date.