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Mozy Review

Mozy at a Glance

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3.75 / 5 stars
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Mozy Promotional Code

Retail Price for 1 Year: $65.89
1 Year Plan Savings (15%):$9.88
Your Price for 1 Year:$56.01
Retail Price for 2 Years:$125.79
2 Year Plan Savings (15%):$18.87
Your Price for 2 Years:$106.93

Price:

  • Click here to save 15% with a Mozy promo code.
  • MozyHome Free: $Free
  • MozyHome 50GB: $5.99/month, $65.89/year with one month of free service or $125.79/two years with three months free service. Additional storage space available for 20GB for $2.00. Promotional code can reduce that amount.
  • MozyHome 125GB: $14.99/month, $109.89/year with one month free service or $209.79/two years with three months free service. Additional storage space available for 20GB for $2.00. Promotional code can reduce that amount.
  • MozyPro: Starts at 10GB for $9.99/month, $109.89/year and $209.79/two years. Larger storage plans available.
  • McAfee Online Backup Powered by Mozy $59.99/Year

Pros:

  • Free 2GB for backup or sync.
  • Tracks all changes.
  • Backs up automatically.
  • Keeps files for 30 days.
  • Macintosh version available.
  • Will backup locked files.
  • Can throttle bandwidth.
  • Can backup to a local hard drive and online.

Cons:

  • First time backup is quite slow.
  • File sharing only through mobile app.
  • MozyPro required to backup business files.
  • Storage plans small compared to competitors

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Full Mozy Review

MozyMozy was started in 2005 and was acquired by EMC in 2007. They were one of the first in the industry and have over 3 million customers with worldwide offices in the UK, Ireland, France and Germany. With the recent additions of Mozy Stash and their mobile applications they continue to offer a very competitive cloud backup and storage service for home users.

Installation
Installing MozyHome has always been an easy task. Once you create an account on the Mozy website you will need to download a he desktop client for your operating system. After it is downloaded installation is as simple as double clicking the setup file.

I recently installed MozyHome on my Windows 8 test machine and recorded the setup if you want to see how easy it is.

Backup
You can see the traces of MozyPro in MozyHome. The client has many settings that allow you to control what you backup, when you backup and where you backup to. MozyHome has a god selection of file sets to choose from for home users and does allow you to view all of the available backup sets if you want. For most home users the defaults should backup the majority of a persons files but it is always a good thing to check and see if your most important files and folders are selected for backup. In the case of my test machine it did not automatically select the files and photos in the public user account so I selected those since that is what I wanted it to backup.

MozyHome also allows you to create and manage a local backup using the MozyHome client. A local backup is always a good of idea and the fact that it is built into MozyHome is an excellent additional feature of MozyHome. I did not have an external hard drive attached to my test machine so I did not try the local backup option this time through but have used the option in the past. It creates a separate folder that and creates a local copy of you backup.

For home users that use Outlook or other software that locks file MozyHome has the ability to use volume shadow copy (VSS) to create snapshots of locked files to back them up. This is a feature that comes through from the MozyPro software. It can be extremely useful to backup files you are currently working on and helps MozyHome rise above some other services that do not use the Microsoft VSS system.

Restoring
You can restore your files from MozyHome in four ways:

  • Using the desktop client.
  • Using the virtual drive that MozyHome creates to browse your files and restoring them.
  • Using the Mozy web portal to restore your files and downloading them to your computer.
  • Using the Mozy mobile apps to browse and restore files on your mobile device.

My test backup was only a few GB so I was able to easily restore files from my backed up files in all four ways. MozyHome keeps 30 versions of your files so if you need to restore a file from the past you can easily select a previous version to restore. If you do manage a local backup with MozyHome it will try to restore from that archive as well since that is faster for large restores.

It is important to remember that the backup in MozyHome stores files for 30 days. If you accidentally delete a file after 30 days it is removed from the cloud backup.

Other Features
Stash – There is a more complete review of Mozy Stash available here, but to summarize, Stash is the cloud storage and file sync feature of MozyHome. It is currently included with MozyHome but is a separate install. Stash will automatically store and sync your files that are added tot he Stash folder. It shares storage with your MozyHome account. If you have a 50GB MozyHome account you

Mobile – The Mozy mobile app offers easy access to browse your backed up files as well as automatomatically upload your photos and videos from your mobile device up to Mozy. Since those are the most common files you create on your mobile device Mozy will automatically protect those files by coping them to the cloud. I had no problem accessing my files either in my backup test or in my Stash folder and downloading them to my mobile. At the moment you cannot stream your music or video, but only download to then play on your device.

Sharing – It is possible to share files from your Mozy backup through the mobile app. You can download the file you want to share and then easily send it to any app that your mobile supports. Not as easy sharing in some other services but it does let you send the files you need to send. Would be nice if you could share from the web portal as well and perhaps that will be something that is coming.

Web Portal – The Mozy web portal has gotten better since they introduced Stash. You can browse and restore your backup as well as upload files directly in your web browser if you want to put something in your Stash folder.

Support – MozyHome support is not as good as the Pro version of their software. You are limited to their knowledge base, community support forum and live chat. Phone support is limited to the Pro and Enterprise customers.

Overall
Mozy strikes a good balance between being easy to use and providing power users with the options they want to customize their backup. The addition of local backup and online storage and sync with Stash make Mozy an excellent option for home users. The only downside of using Mozy is their storage plan sizes 50GB and 125GB storage plans are simply not large enough for many home users. You can purchase additional storage space but $2.00/20GB/month additional storage can get expensive quickly compared to other services that do offer unlimited storage. If you are not needing additional storage Mozy is still an excellent choice to keep your files backed up and synced.

Mozy Promo Code

Save on your Mozy online backup subscription with our exclusive Mozy promotional code. Simply enter click through and enter our Mozy promo code in the second page of the sign up form.

Click here for our Mozy promo code!

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Mozy Sign up Form Part 2. Enter the Mozy promo code here to save 15%.

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More Mozy Reviews

CNET [xrr rating=3/5]

Mozy is the simple way to back up all the important stuff on your computer so in the event of disaster, your data is still retrievable.
CNET

PC Mag [xrr rating=3/5]

Mozy improves ease of use and setup, but still supports just one computer per account and doesn’t let you back up network or removable drives. That keeps it a step behind the competition.
PC Mag

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Comments

11 responses to “Mozy Review”

  1. Edmund Avatar
    Edmund

    I have been using Mozy for four year and I am every disappointed. One day I tried to restore and only then I learned from Mozy that my last backup was 104 days ago. Great. Wouldn’t you say that is the best piece of news at the time you need to restore??

    I called and they told me there is something wrong. It could not my antivirus, etc. A bunch of BS. I asked them why they did not inform me and they said they are not there to inform customers. I say what happens to the alert I configured that if my backup did not occur in a few days, I am supposed to be notified. They said it may be caused by my antivirus.

    I said I paid you to back up my file and not explaining to me why the backup failed. They responded by speculating why my backup stopped. Anyway, if I did not call for 10 years, they would continue to charge me but do not really care if I had indeed backed up or not. That sucks.

    In my account, they clearly knew that my backup stopped. They clearly knew that I continue to pay and they clear knew that I want an alert to notify me should my backup stopped.

    They did not care. ALl they care is whether I continue to make my payment.

    Mozy sucks. I will discontinue Mozy and you should do the same.

    Reply
  2. Vahur Avatar
    Vahur

    Thanks for review. Mozy seems to be good backup service.

    Reply
  3. Nicolas Avatar
    Nicolas

    Been using Mozy for nearly 3 years without problems when suddenly their servers seem to have “lost” 380GB of my data. It is no longer available for restore on the client or on the website, and, after a week of ServerError12 messages, the client is trying to back up 380GB of “new” files! Mozy support thus far has been nearly nonexistent despite the gravity of this situation. Mozy was always my recommendation to friends/colleagues/family, and now I’m telling them all to reconsider!

    Reply
    1. John Avatar
      John

      Sorry to hear you are having problems with Mozy. I have had small hiccups with them but nothing that was not solved in a day or two. Let me know how things turn out.

      Reply
  4. Philip Sellers Avatar
    Philip Sellers

    I have just completed my initial backup for Mozy on Mac. I had about 60GB worth of data, mostly photos and home movies, which took a little over one month to backup. Incremental backups are now very quick (< 1 minute most times). The Mozy client is really easy to use and setup great for almost any level of user. Although hidden in the Mac version, it includes features for throttling your bandwidth and granular file selection and exclusion. The predefined filters to find common sets of files to backup is great, especially for the non-technical user. The pay-for service is priced well for a home user who needs online backup. My biggest issue with Mozy (and all online backup vendors at the time I signed up about a year ago) was that none offered an offline restore method. Mozy has since added this feature and its not grossly overpriced like competitors, such as Backblaze. For me to restore my backup via DVD would cost something in the tune of $80… and if I'd lost a drive, that's much less expensive than data recovery from a vendor like OnTrack. As for downsides, (on the Mac at least) the preparation process seemed to wait on the backup to stream and then the streams would stop as new data is prepared. Not sure why that happened, but it made the initial backup take much longer, in my opinion. But all in all, the service is well worth the money.

    Reply
    1. John Avatar
      John

      Philip, Thank you for your review of Mozy. You are right about the offline restore method and that is one good reasons to choose Mozy over some other services. I think Mozy is starting to offer a hard drive restore option as well, where they will restore all your files on a hard drive and ship the drive to you. I have not seen it anywhere on their website, but following Mozy on Twitter I have seen it mentioned a couple times. That is certainly the best method for a large restore since even 60GB on DVD’s is a lot of DVD’s to work through.

      Reply
  5. Reidy Avatar
    Reidy

    I am concerned about restoring from Mozy given a lot of bad press on the web. I did just email them about getting back 190GB of data that I have on their server. They got straight back to me and said that if it was over 100GB they would send it on a hard drive. I have not seen this mentioned anywhere on the net. There is an obscure reference to a hard drive restore on their site. But I think Mozy should make this better known as it would be a deal breaker for many.

    Reply
    1. John Avatar
      John

      You are right Mozy should make it more known if they will ship you are hard drive. They talk about a DVD restore, but with 100GB that is still a lot of DVD’s. It makes sense to ship hard drives for large restores really. You can’ download that much data. I am amazed at the number of online backup companies that only offer a web restore or restore through their desktop client. It is not really practical. I know some Mozy folk stop by here occasionally, but if you are on Twitter you should send @Mozy a note and ask if they offer a hard drive restore.

      Reply
  6. Lukas Avatar
    Lukas

    I’m suffering a lot of pain getting my data back from Mozy. It’s not that it’s lost, but getting my 300GB back is now at 1 month and counting, and their support, though wanting to be helpful, aren’t actually able to help. See my full experience at http://blendedmusings.blogspot.com/2009/04/mozy-backup-getting-lost-in-cloud-bad.html

    Reply
  7. Drew Sikora Avatar
    Drew Sikora

    I’ve used Mozy and enjoyed the service. They kept my data safe and when my hard drive failed suddenly and without warning I was able to restore my system and lost only a day’s worth of work – and that was from a Sunday too so barely nothing was lost. I’d recommend Mozy for easy off-site backups (why make DVDs when your house could still burn down?). Their restore process is a bit tedious thanks to the encryption and the compression of your backed up data on their remote servers – it can take several hours if you request restore files of 3GB or more for the files to become available to download.

    I’ve stopped using Mozy because I’m tech-savvy enough to work up my own redundant backup system now that I have the proper components (I didn’t when I first signed up for Mozy) but for the average computer user Mozy will be invaluable.

    My full thoughts on Mozy and why you should keep backups is on my blog: http://www.blade-edge.com/?p=1254

    Reply
    1. John Avatar
      John

      @Drew Thank you for your review.

      Reply

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