Mozy backup after migration to Win 7

[docholliday]

I have used Mozy on-line backup for a while now, when I was running XP. I find the service to work quite well, at an excellent price.

Now that I have migrated to Win 7, I would like to restart my good back-up habits. The client seems to work fine with 7. However, it appears that the client wants to reload all of my files.

I want to avoid this, considering it took about a month 24/7 the first time around.

Catch is, I have made modest improvements to the structure of my directories, such that some files have been moved around.

I have talked to Mozy a few times now about the best way to proceed. Each time, the customer service agent did not seem particularly knowledgeable about what to do.

One agent has told me to simply restart the back-up process, and the system will figure out what has already been uploaded regardless of a change in file location. The agent kept referring to this as syncing. I tried this. It appeared to me that the client was again performing an initial back up and uploading everything all over again.

Another agent told me to use the restore function. But they did not sound very confident to me.

Does anyone out there have any experience with using Mozy? After making the move to Win 7, how did you resume your backups? Do I really need to do the whole thing over again, or is there a better method. Or is agent number 1 correct, and Mozy will actually figure everything out without having to start from scratch, even though it appears this it is?

Thanks for your help.

 

[patio]

I use MozBack...neat small and efficient.
Backs up complet profiles including bookmarks themes and extensions in both FireFox and ThunderBird...

I won't trust important data to an online storage service...but that's just me.

MozBackup - Backup tool for Firefox and Thunderbird

 

[netguysc]

I used mozy, the reconfigured my file structure and after a short period of time it seemed to recognize what was already backed up. When I went to restore it seems to show the old full folders and the empty new folder. I am still waiting for the 30 days to pass since the change, for any file on mozy but not your computer after 30 days is deleted from the mozy system.

I am sure that I did not have to reload the 137 gigs that was there already. It seemed to do a syncing procedure then after that it was okay, showed a fully loaded.

 

[docholliday]

@ patio:
Yeah, I understand your concern.

I also have a local back-up of my data. The online data is in case of a catastrophic event. For example, house fire, etc...

My Aunt/Uncle lost their home to a fire once. When they were outside waiting for the fire department, they realized that the family photoalbum was still inside. So, my Uncle ran in the burning house and retrieved it. Anyway, this is why I use an online service; I am an amateur photography and I have thousands of pics that I need to keep safe.

Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[docholliday]

@netguyssc:

Thanks for your story. So, I guess the software really undergoes a syncing process?

Last night, it looked to me like it was reloading everything.

I guess I'll just start it up and let it run.

 

[bigmck]

Like yourself, I have found the Tech folks there unable to understand what is being asked of them. == When I backedup after installing Win 7, I had to do the whole thing over again. It took a while, but as far as I know, that is the only way to do it.

 

[docholliday]

I was afraid of that.

That's just plain silly.

I just restarted the client again. I'm not sure if I'll let it continue. Maybe I'll look for another option. I mean, I've even thought about renting a safe deposit box as a safe place to stow back up DVDs or drives. But whatever system I use, it needs to be effortless. I know I won't regularly take time out of my schedule to make sure that back-ups get done. It's too easy for me to say 'I'll do it later...'.

If only my upload bandwidth was higher...

 

[docholliday]

I think it may be syncing folder structures after all.
After 1 hour of initiating back-up via the client, it has completed 3% of approximately 100GB.

My max upload speed is 2Mbits/second.
Calculated out, that translates to about 0.84GB/hour. After 1 hour, the client claims to have done about 3GB.

Also, it does not appear to be uploading nearly as many files as it was on the first try yesterday. Maybe it's only 'retracking' yesterday's work? We'll see...

 

[patio]

Doc what is your backup regimen ? ?
Just curious...

 

[docholliday]

First, I have two drives in RAID 1. I have lost two drives in the past 7 years. It really sucks when it happens, so now I feel covered against a failure.

Second, I have an external drive via USB. Everyonce in a while I will back up files here (especially pics).

Third, was via Mozy. When I am working, the client sits quietly in the background. When I change or add a file, it will automatically back it up to their server. I love the automatic part, because I get so busy working on things and I don't stop to back-up. I keep putting it off. It's just part of my nature. Instead of fighting it, I made it a non-issue.

But I have also found Mozy to be very helpful in the sense that it allows very easy access to a second copy of all of my files via a virtual drive. For example, not to long ago, I was working on a presentation and screwed something up and overwrote work that I had spent a lot of time working on. All I had to do is click a few times, and I was able to restore the file to the backed up copy. I was very happy.

 

[docholliday]

OK...after several rounds of e-mail and chats with Mozy support, I have accepted the fact that if you change OS, you will need to completely re-upload data for back-up. I moved through Kubler-Ross's stages in about a day and a half, but so be it.

Hopefully someone out there will read this and save themselves precious time by accepting this silly fact quicker than I did.

 

[morisysh]

mozy's great until you start getting server errors, or connection errors. At that point, the support staff basically seem to be lost. If you enjoy a lengthy back and forth email relationship with strangers on the other side of the planet, take great pleasure in attaching your mozy log to emails repeatedly, love to reinstall the software over and over, and adore getting emails that do nothing but promise to email you again in 24 hours once the senior technicians have figured out what's wrong, mozy is perfect.

If you actually want a reliable backup service, however.... um....

I've been asking for a refund for 3 days now, but they don't seem to have a sales department.

 

[omargosh]

I realize this is too late for the OP, but for anybody else out there ...

I recently upgraded from XP to Win7, with a Mozy backup of about ~300000 files and ~110GB. I read in some other forums about the synching, and about the fact that when you first start the backups again on the new OS, it appears to be backing up, but supposedly that's just appearances, and that you supposedly need to wait awhile for Mozy to realize that your files are really just in new locations. Here was my experience:

It took 6 full days for the new backup to finish (actually, it stopped w/ just 8 files to go for some reason). While it was going, I saw the Status window read "Transferring: filename" too many times for comfort. When I looked afterwards at the history, though, what apparently happened is:

• Any file above roughly 255kb was recognized by Mozy as already on their servers and was just resynched, not transferred again.
• Any file below below ~255kb was apparently reuploaded. However, that was 233035 files. The total transferred was apparently 29GB, which I think seems right for about 6 days, and which apparently means that I have lots of small files and relatively fewer larger files.
• A good 4-5gb was new files that were in directories that I forgot to exclude when reconfiguring the list of files/directories to back up. Which reminds me:

PIECE OF ADVICE: Before you move from XP to Win7, try to make a list of the directories you're backing up or excluding from backup while still on the old machine. Once you've installed Mozy Home on the new machine, and told it that it's replacing your old one, it's very hard to find a list of which directories you previously had backed up. Since "Documents and Settings" is now "Users", Mozy considers everything in the old file structure to have been deleted (though around for 30 days), and the only way I have found to see a list of deleted files is the online browse/recovery interface, which is not fast, and which requires clicking that inconspicuous "show deleted files" checkbox.

So to sum up: apparently the Mozy people are kind of correct in their claims about files being recognized as already existing on their servers (thus not requiring all files be backed up again from their new location / directory structure), but this apparently only applies to files of a certain size, so still expect for initial setup on the machine to take a while, and for it to appear as though it's doing a full backup again, even though it probably isn't.