Backup Review: Mozy vs iDrive
TL;DR: Mozy sucks, pay a little more for iDrive
I just cancelled my 2-year subscription to Mozy’s unlimited home online backup product after I upgraded to Windows 7. See, it thought I was on an entirely new computer, and asked me to backup everything again. This is not horribly unreasonable, so I said, OK–let’s setup a new backup set. After letting it run for days, it would backup a small subset of files (3%) and die. Not cool. Some of the well-known issues with Mozy include:
- If Mozy fails to access 10 files, it gives up entirely on your 100s of GB backup set.
- Mozy is rate-limited and slow, uploading is less than 1Mb/s
- Opening the Mozy backup set configuration window can take 5-10 minutes
- Mozy slows down your pc
Mozy’s status window while a backup is in-progress
On the plus side of Mozy, there are a few nice things about it:
- $4.95 a month for unlimited GB of files (if you can ever manage to upload them)
- Tech support is fairly responsive, they refunded my credit card promptly
Today I signed up for the free 2GB trial version of iDrive and I’m much more impressed. The service is quick and snappy, fast to let you pick out your backup set, and even faster to upload. I was able to sustain a transfer rate of 3.3Mb/s, and the GUI clearly showed me logs of what files had been backed up. My computer remained responsive while backing up.
The suave iDrive backup screen
The only downside to iDrive is price. You pay $150/yr for 500GB of space. Mozy would cost you just $60, roughly 1/3 as much. However, my overall experience with the iDrive software more than makes up for the price differential. There’s no point in backing up your precious files if the software you use has serious trouble doing so. While I have no doubt that should I need to restore my backup, Mozy would work fine, it’s getting files there in the first place that’s tough.
What’s your experience been?
Update: Wow, just going through my disk to free up space, and saw that after I uninstalled it MozyHome left an 800MB directory in Program Files. WTF!
New GMail Security Feature
I was using my GMail today and was surprised to see a little link that read “Last account activity: 1 minute ago at this IP (74.101.6.15). Details.” If you click on Details, it brings up a popup with the latest activity on your account–who accessed your email last, and from where:
Activity on this account: This feature provides information about the last activity on this mail account and any concurrent activity.
GMail now tells you with timestamps (a) what kind of thing (browser, IMAP client, etc) accessed your email (b) when it happened, and (c) what the IP address was. The only thing lacking is a log of what content precisely was downloaded. So finally Google has solved the “is my significant other spying on me” or “do my parents secretly read my email” questions.
UPS Tracking and Delivery Messages
I bought a Wellington Rosé Four Pack from woot on 9/23/2009, and got a tracking number from them (1Z203Y18A845372907) on 10/6/2009. The tracking, which began days before I received a tracking number, goes back and forth between the east coast and west coast:
Location Date Local Time DescriptionWhat’s This?
SAN PABLO, CA, US 10/13/2009 1:40 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
SAN PABLO, CA, US 10/12/2009 3:51 P.M. IN TRANSIT-PACKAGE LEFT IN A CONTAINER / DELIVERY RESCHEDULED
PARSIPPANY, NJ, US 10/07/2009 1:36 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
SAN PABLO, CA, US 10/02/2009 3:09 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
SAN PABLO, CA, US 10/01/2009 8:43 P.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
PETALUMA, CA, US 10/01/2009 7:36 P.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
10/01/2009 6:51 P.M. ORIGIN SCAN
US 09/29/2009 8:00 P.M. BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED
Tracking results provided by UPS: 10/13/2009 10:09 A.M. ET
The delivery date, which was originally 10/8/2009 when I first signed in to track it, is now 10/19/2009. I’m not sure what exactly has happened here!
Related: Twitter search for posts tagged #upsfail turns up more interesting anecdotes:
- KeithPipes: Oh, and thanks for the call yesterday letting me know you’d make the delivery between 8am and 7pm. #upsfail
- ladycatie: UPS delivered my alice.com order to the wrong person/apartment! #UPSFail
- DocOccupant: #UPSfail So, UPS lost my shipment of books and have now decided to refund my company instead of me. So, no books and out the shipping.
- ppdiva: @MomTV I have tried the 1-800 number. They are no help. Never returning any phonecalls that were promised. It’s so aggravating. #UPSFAIL