Mozy - corrupt restores, and virtual drive

[John Tombs]

I've run Mozy for several months, and the backups work flawlessly. It really
has the potential to be a killer application. Perhaps those of us in
hurricane-prone Florida especially appreciate the need for offsite
backups...

BUT - on test restores (just a few MB) using the web interface, I've had
several cases where one or more files within the Zip archive have a bad CRC.
Even though I can extract them using Info-Zip or 7-Zip I would obviously
suspect their integrity. Mozy support have not replied to several emails (I
have the free version). I've seen a couple of similar reports on the web,
but not enough to suggest that the problem is widespread. Has anyone had
similar experiences?

Then I remembered the "Mozy Remote Backup" virtual drive. It works fine.
Whether it would work if I had to rebuild my computer from scratch is
another question. But here's a curious thing. I elected to use may own
encryption key so, per the FAQ, "It's impossible for us to decrypt your data
when you use your own key". Yet I was never asked for my key - the restored
file just arrived, ready to go, at my chosen download location. Unless I'm
missing something the implication is that Mozy has complete and unrestricted
access to the content of my files (and probably yours, if you got this far).

Before cancelling my account (now I'm looking at BeInSync.com) I'd like to
know what others think.

BTW are there other active forums that cover Mozy? I found one on Tucows,
but it only had a couple of posts.

[Will Niccolls]

Post by John Tombs
BUT - on test restores (just a few MB) using the web interface, I've had
several cases where one or more files within the Zip archive have a bad
CRC. Even though I can extract them using Info-Zip or 7-Zip I would
obviously suspect their integrity. Mozy support have not replied to
several emails (I have the free version). I've seen a couple of similar
reports on the web, but not enough to suggest that the problem is
widespread. Has anyone had similar experiences?
Then I remembered the "Mozy Remote Backup" virtual drive. It works fine.
Whether it would work if I had to rebuild my computer from scratch is
another question. But here's a curious thing. I elected to use may own
encryption key so, per the FAQ, "It's impossible for us to decrypt your
data when you use your own key". Yet I was never asked for my key - the
restored file just arrived, ready to go, at my chosen download location.
Unless I'm missing something the implication is that Mozy has complete and
unrestricted access to the content of my files (and probably yours, if you
got this far).

John, I use the pay version and their support has been quite responsive to
my questions.

Perhaps you can apply some leverage to them: "I'd love to upgrade but I'm
very concerned about these issues".

So far I've had zero problems with restores--but I"m using their key, not
mine. My only concern is the time it may take to download and restore large
amounts of data. The only large restore I've done actually expired on thier
server before it completely downloaded! It was about 9GB and I have a 5MB
connection.