This is a guest post by Stefan Didak, who tested Mozy 2.0 for Mac back in November on his new iMac and wrote about it in December. And yes, it is February now that I’m posting it, and have no one to blame but myself.

Installation was quick, easy, and took up an estimated 65MB.

After entering your user e-mail address and password you get to sign up for an account or use a product key if you already have one. I had one provided by Mozy for the purposes of testing.

During the first time configuration you will be asked whether to use the MozyHome’s key or your personal key for encryption purposes [5]. Mozy will encrypt your data with a 448-bit key to keep prying eyes from sniffing around in your data, which can be especially useful if you’re on a public or local Wi-Fi connection that can easily be intercepted and sniffed for packets. (That means capturing your data as you transmit it over the network.)

I created an encryption key of my own and saved it to a safe place because Mozy does not have access to the key so if you misplace it or flake out and forget it you will not be able to restore your files! Make sure you have a backup of your key in more than one place.

After going through the setup and configuration I directed MozyHome to some folders I wanted it to use as the source of the backup.

The main interface (which you hardly ever need to look at because Mozy will do all its work in the background) shows the schedule of the next backup, when the previous backup was made, how many files are selected and how many are going to be backed up on the next scheduled interval. And, of course, how much storage space you are using for all these files.

Mozy allows you to define the backup schedule and how much network bandwidth you will allow it to use (so it won’t interfere with other network traffic).  set the schedule to do its backups every day at 3:30AM and decided not to limit the bandwidth at all since there’s not a lot of network traffic on my internet lines around 3:30AM.

Once Mozy started doing its backup the main dialog for MozyHome can show you that a backup is in progress. It’s unfortunate that MozyHome did not take full advantage of the 20 Mbps upload (upstream) speed on the internet line that the iMac is using. The speed of performing the backup of the selected folders varied greatly ranging anywhere from 2KB/s to 250KB/s but at no point provided a constant speed. There is some CPU usage going on because of the encryption being performed but when looking at the processes involved with the Mozy backup it didn’t seem like those were a bottleneck on a 2.93Ghz Quad Core i7.4.

An earlier version of MozyHome was also tested because this newer version has higher upload speeds. Unfortunately it was difficult to reach a conclusion because of the inconsistent upload speeds and lack of consistency but it does seem that the new version is generally a bit faster. However, on a powerful enough system it does not appear to take much advantage of a 20 Mbps upstream in bandwidth.

Once I had a few GB’s worth of data backed up (and that took a few days, mostly incrementally because the iMac was not powered on 24/7) it was time to try restoring (that is, downloading) some files. Selecting the files and the destination where you want to restore them is about as simple as it gets. And it got the job done even though I did cancel the restore after a while of testing. But again the bandwidth used (out of a 120 Mbps downstream bandwidth) was far below the capacity of the internet line and as you can tell from the screenshot, restoring files peaked at 326KB/s. That’s not bad at all for most users with consumer grade internet lines but quite a lot below the 12-14 MB/s I often get from the 120mbps line.

During a real crisis scenario, the performance may not matter as much getting your precious files back again—or every minute might be costing your business money.

In conclusion, I would recommend a local, high speed, backup, for the Mac, preferably using the included Time Machine and an external hard drive (a FW800 drive is really very spiffy), but that means both your system or laptop and its main backup are in the same physical location. But if you want a secondary backup that’s off-site, easy to configure, requires very little involvement or manual action to get it going, MozyHome does provide what you may need for that purpose. Just don’t expect extremely high speeds and fast backups and restores.

Stefan also forwarded me several Mozy News messages containing helpful tips like this one:

When I first tested the Windows version of Mozy, somewhere around 2007, slow upload time was the major drawbacks I noticed. But that seemed to be an issue with most online backup tools. And everyone knows the so-called high-speed Internet in the United States is a joke compared to what’s available in Asia and in Western Europe.

So I was surprised—particularly given what Todd Esplin said in the interview about greater upload speeds—that a fast Internet connection didn’t result in fast backups. I had some discussions with the Mozy team about this, but they weren’t conclusive. Naturally a process that requires encryption and other kinds of encoding (for versioning, say) is going to be slower than a straightforward FTP transfer. But it doesn’t seem logical that it should be that much slower.

As long as speed is not of the essence—and after that first backup, things do go more quickly—Mozy has a lot going for it. They’ve been around a while, and have EMC behind them. They’ve got a great sense of humor. The software is easy to use. You  can choose your own encryption key. It gets your data off-site, which helps protect you against theft and natural disaster.  And there don’t seem to be that many other options for online backup for Mac, though there are lots of competitors in the Windows market.

If you know of a better tool for backing up your Mac online—and particularly a faster one—write in and let us know. Leave a comment on the blog or send a message to sallie [at] fileslinger [dot] com.

Last Friday I had the opportunity to talk to Todd Esplin, principal product manager at Mozy, about the just-released Mozy 2.0 for Mac.

As a PC user, I can’t review this product myself, but the Ur-Guru has recently started investing in Macs because he’s getting into iOS development, so he’s testing it out and will have a review for you soon. Meanwhile, I’ve waited long enough to publish the interview, so I’m releasing it separately. (I’ve just changed web hosts and switched to a multi-site installation of WordPress, which involved a big domain-mapping adventure, among other things, but never mind that, I’ll write about it somewhere else for those who are interested.)

This is not quite a word-for-word transcription of the interview, but I have not changed anything material.

What was the most challenging thing about developing the Mac version?

Although we were one of the first in the market with a Mac client, it’s been slightly behind or moderately behind the Windows client from a feature standpoint, just because of its maturity , so we’ve had to do two or three things to catch up, as well as take this from a usability and UI (user interface) perspective that was focused on a Windows platform and then create a Mac UI environment. We really worked on our performance, and that was a challenge. One of the biggest complaints we hear is that backups take too long. People don’t understand that if they have a lot of data to send through a small pipe, it’s going to take a while. But we also had to take a look at what we could do to speed up the process. We’ve taken some pretty significant measures over 6-9 months of development time to optimize our transfer process, what we do to prepare the files before they leave your computer and go up to our cloud. We do less work on the client, on the desktop, and we pushed a lot of the work we do back to the server. We scan files, prepare a list of files and the changes that are going to be backed up, and then we just send the files. Previously we were doing more analysis and more structuring on the desktop. That’s reduced the amount of data that needs to go through the bandwidth, and a lot of our users will see immediate benefits from that.

The second thing we did around performance has to do with scanning for changed files to back up. Prior to the 2.0 release we were limited by Tiger operating system because they required us to use Spotlight to do the scanning. With Leopard and Snow Leopard, we don’t have to scan the whole drive, so every time a backup kicks off, it’s faster.

The Ur-Guru reports that Mozy doesn’t seem to be taking full advantage of European upload speeds? Why not?

Try the 1.7.3 version for comparison and see whether 2.0 is significantly faster.  Also, a European user should back up to datacenters in Europe to avoid latency backing up to US datacenters. Of course the encryption and creating the list of files that have and have not changed do mean that Mozy backups take longer than straight FTP uploads. Customer reports so far do indicate that the 2.0 version backs up faster than the 1.7 version.

Are there significant differences between the Mac and PC versions of the program?

We’re at 90-95% parity between the two versions. There are differences in the UI, but the core features of setting up my backup, scheduling my backup to run,  the flexibility I have with setting a specific time or a frequency—those are all the same.  The way that we now process the backup is the same now; it wasn’t before. The way I  can throttle my bandwidth (use less or more bandwidth for the backup) is the same.

One thing that is different, and it’s noteworthy to us, is that in the 2.0 product for Windows we added a local backup feature that we call 2x protect. It means that I can now decide which files I want to back up both to a local hard drive and to the online service. For the Mac, we consciously chose not to add that, because as we gathered customer feedback, we found that everyone preferred just to use Time Machine for local backups. Users didn’t want to have two places to go and manage a local backup. We looked at integrating with Time Machine, but there were technical hurdles we would need to overcome, and the majority of users we talked to aren’t asking for it.

Is there anything Mozy doesn’t back up? Are there files Apple doesn’t let you back up?

You can take the default backup sets, like “My Photos” or customize them and put any file extension you want in there. But there are server-like database files that you can’t back up with our desktop version, but you can back them up on the server version. We don’t back up applications, but we do back up application information like browser favorites. We back up everything you’re commonly using and a lot of things you don’t even know that you’re using. If a customer looks at everything we’re backing up, they’re going to be surprised, but if you set it as a preference, we have to back it up. There aren’t many things we don’t back up apart from applications. And we update file types quickly. So every time, say, Quicken comes out with a new file extension, we go in and add it to the default backup set.

What percentage of your users are on Macs?

17-18%, predominantly in the consumer market. We’re seeing more Macs appearing in the business market, however. We usually get into enterprises because people are using the home version of Mozy and tell their IT guys to adopt us.

Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you want my readers to know about?

We’re striving to make our backups simpler, because we’re getting more customers who are less technically savvy. In the beginning, we got the “protectionists,” the people who went out looking for security and were highly aware and considered themselves advanced users. When we surveyed our users in those days, 60% or more marked themselves as advanced. I’ve looked at trends, and that percentage is coming down. Some people want to watch how fast the transfer rate is for their backups; others just want to let it run. We’re trying to meet the needs of both user types. We’ve left in the advanced options, but we’re now highlighting and emphasizing the basic options someone needs to know: if my backup is working, when the last backup ran, and can I distinguish the files that are backed up from those that aren’t. We’ve added new screens and new views to make it easier to choose files and to see what files are backed up. If it has a green dot next to it, it’s backed up. If it doesn’t, it’s not, and you can add it right then. So far the feedback we’ve had is that this is a great feature.  It’s instilling the trust we want.

What’s your  favorite feature in Mozy 2.0 for Mac?

I like the speed. That’s the one I’m really focused on and we’re continually trying to make it faster. But as far as the Mac product is concerned, I do like the integration. We used to have two or three views to find your information. Now the menu bar that icon gives you all the information you need, plus the advanced information if you hold down the control button. We’ve merged everything else into the system preferences in the Mac, which is very native-Mac-like. One specific feature I really like is the ability to see which files are going to backed up yet.

Have you been getting much feedback yet?

We have. It’s only been out for a week and a half, but we did a pretty substantial beta test and got a lot of great feedback. What’s encouraging is that I’m not getting a lot of calls from our support team, which means it’s a pretty stable product and they haven’t been getting complaints about it. We do a monthly customer satisfaction survey, broken down by Windows and Mac users, and the most recent survey was more positive than the previous one on the Mac product. That doesn’t mean everyone has converted to 2.0, but probably by next month they will. Generally the feedback has been positive.

We constantly monitor blogs and our customer forums. We have had people say we oversimplified. We tell them how to find the advanced settings. We expected to get that response; anytime you change an interface, you get that response. But the new customers really like it.

Thanks again to Todd Esplin for taking the time to speak to me. Come back next week to read the product review.

A few weeks ago I got an e-mail from my stepmother, who converted to Mac some years ago when she left the corporate world. As I wrote back in November, she brought my father into the Apple fold after his retirement.

For the most part, they are very happy with their Macs, but sometimes trouble rears its ugly head in paradise. Though Macs are well-constructed pieces of hardware, they’re not immune to drive failure—and some of Apple’s products exhibit other flaws. “You might be interested in writing about Time Capsule failures,” Pam wrote.

I was totally unaware of this problem until mine died on Friday as it had been operating flawlessly up to that point. It was not until I did the usual round of troubleshooting per the manual that I Googled time capsule failures, to know that I was not alone. I am off to the store today to get my replacement time capsule, but word on the net is that Apple still has not fixed the underlying flaw so now I am looking at a second backup drive or cloud backup as I can not rely on Time Capsule. If you Google “time capsule power failure”, you will find lots to write about.

Indeed, if you search for “apple time capsule power failure” (without the quotes), you get (at the time of this writing) 114,000 results. A November 2009 article from the Guardian includes a nice graph pegging the average life span of a Time Capsule at 535 days:

The problem is not disk failure, but the power supply. Theoretically, the data on the unusable Time Capsules could be fine, but you can’t get to it.

Frustrated Time Capsule owners have created websites like AppleTimeCapsule.me, which provides warranty-voiding tips on how to prevent your Time Capsule from croaking. (Warning: in addition to voiding your warranty, this solution requires power tools, or sufficient muscle-power to put holes in metal casings without power tools.)

And then there’s the now-famous, only-half-joking Apple Time Capsule Memorial Register.

Once the number of dead time capsules reached 2500, the site stopped accepting new submissions. That doesn’t mean Time Capsules have stopped dying, but Apple has improved its replacement policies.

Pam described her experience this way:

Got my replacement for my Time Capsule—a refurbished Time Capsule. I was told that if it fried again I should bring it back for another replacement. I asked the Genius what Apple was doing to fix the problem and he said that I would need to call Apple. When you take the time capsule back they plug it in with your plug and then their plug and when it does not power up, they just hand you the replacement.

Can anyone spot what Apple left out of this resolution? That’s right: what about your data? Your presumably still intact, possibly entirely confidential data, now in the hands of the “genius” behind the counter at the Apple store. Well, apparently, that’s not Apple’s problem.

Both the websites I mentioned above offer some suggestions, however. The memorial site has a “Now What?” page that breaks down your options into Replace, Repair, and Do nothing. (Hmm. Anyone remember “Abort, Retry, Fail”?) “Replace” is what Apple will help you do. For “Repair,” you either need to be something of a hardware geek, or to hire one. The site points to a list of Time Capsule repairpeople around the globe, but it’s a short list. Any competent computer hardware repair person should be able to get your disk out and put it into another drive case, though.

AppleTimeCapsule.me suggests taking your TimeCapsule disk out before returning the case for replacement, then putting your own disk into the new case instead of using the one provided to you. This is possibly not quite honest, but then again, neither is Apple’s just taking your data.

It would make more sense to me if Apple just provided you with a new empty Time Capsule case and stuck your existing disk into it, especially if it’s clear that the point of failure was the power supply. Admittedly they don’t look all that easy to take apart and reassemble, but it seems as though the company might need to address the design anyway.

Meanwhile, as convenient as a Time Capsule is, it doesn’t seem like a good idea to make it your only backup device. What do other Time Capsule owners out there use to back up their Time Capsules (or their Macs) with? Is there a favored external hard drive maker? A most popular online backup provider? Inquiring minds want to know.

When I was preparing for my most recent visit to Cleveland to see my parents (that’s Cleveland, Ohio, for any of you reading this from outside the USA), my father said, “Bring a PC.”

I haven’t traveled without a computer since the days when they made you turn your computer on at security, back when you had to hunt all over the airport to find a power outlet, long before wi-fi was invented. Now that I have this nifty netbook (on which I’m typing while waiting for the plane from Chicago to Oakland to fill up), there was no chance I wouldn’t bring it along, especially since I had an appointment to talk WordPress with my brother’s law firm. (I won’t link to their website; it would embarrass them. There’s a story behind the website, and it isn’t pretty.)

But what my father meant was “Bring something that runs Windows.” Dad retired at the end of 2008, and my stepmother had convinced him to switch to a Mac, something she’d done about a year before that.

Now, I have nothing against Macs. I used to own one myself. (Okay, that was back in the days of System 7.1.) The hardware is beautiful and  the UI (user interface) is slick, though I’m not sure it’s really so much more intuitive for someone with no experience.

Regardless, they have some definite drawbacks if you’re coming out of 40 years in corporate America, and one of them is the fact that Microsoft Office for the Mac does not work the same way as Office for Windows. (I know, they’re coming out with a new version of it. And I also know, and explained to Dad, that you can run Windows quite nicely in a Virtual Machine on a Mac—something you’d have a much harder time doing in reverse.)

The big problem, in this case, was Outlook’s famous proprietary PST file. Dad had three of them, given to him by the IT staff at BP when he turned in his company laptop (an undistinguished Dell). Outlook somehow (Microsoft experts, feel free to help me out) manages to store your contacts, calendar, e-mail messages, attachments, tasks, and everything else in a single PST file. But without a working copy of Outlook, getting anything out of that PST file is…just a bit difficult.

Not only won’t Entourage for Mac won’t open PST files, Microsoft appears to have entirely failed to make any kind of conversion tool. The “Genius Bar” at the  local Apple store couldn’t help either; they insist they know nothing at all about Windows programs. So it was up to Yours Truly, the family geek, to find a way to restore Dad’s e-mail from his backup CDs.

Dad had already had his contacts exported to an Excel spreadsheet (though he didn’t know how to import them into Entourage, and it turns out that the contact fields in Entourage and those in Outlook don’t match, so you have to map them onto each other by hand), and the calendar didn’t matter, but he wanted the e-mail attachments. Someone had turned him onto a program called O2M (for Office to Mac) by a company called Little Machines. (Based in San Francisco, as it happens.)

The program is only $10, primarily because it relies on a working copy of Outlook (and, of course, a Windows computer to run it on) for most of its function. I imagine that its creators envision their customers using it before they get rid of their PCs, rather than afterwards. I downloaded the Outlook XP/2003 version onto Mena (since I’m still using Office 2003 on her, so as not to tax her more limited resources), tested it, and then paid for the license. Then I copied Dad’s PST files onto a USB stick (no, not the one that got smashed), opened them in Outlook, and started up O2M.

As you can see from the screenshots, the interface is very straightforward.

Once you’ve checked the mailboxes you want (in this case, I excluded all my own mail, contacts, and calendar items), O2M asks whether you want to include all your attachments or just those under a certain size or in a certain date range, and then proceeds on to calendar and contact items. Dad’s PST files only contained mail items, so they were easy to export, but it took a while for the program to process the messages. (It seems to run pretty fast, but it has to handle them one by one.)

The output of O2M’s e-mail conversion is mbox files. I remember those from the days when I used Eudora. The curious thing about Entourage, however, is that even though it will, allegedly, import mbox files, the import process didn’t work; the files on my memory stick remained grayed out. So I decided to RTFM (Read the Freaking Manual, which you get to by clicking that little “Help” button in the top left of the O2M window), and discovered that there are special directions for importing the O2M files to Entourage.

Here’s how to import mbox mail files into Microsoft’s Entourage program:

1. Start up Entourage. If this is your first time using it, you might want to create one or more folders where your imported emails can be dragged and stored.
2. Drag the mbox file you want to import into Entourage’s folder list and drop it. Entourage will turn the mbox file into a new mail folder. Open the new folder, and you’ll find all of your imported emails inside it. If you like, you can move one or more emails from the new folder to other folders to organize them.

Dad had a folder for “Imported Mail” in Entourage already, so I dragged all the mail into that, renamed the mail folders to something less clumsy, re-created the subfolder structures—and we were in business. All the attachments had come through.

So if you’re leaving the corporate rat-race and want to switch from Windows to Mac, I can recommend O2M. And I definitely recommend getting it before you dispose of the Windows machine. Otherwise you might spend almost a year waiting around for your geeky offspring to help you turn your backup CDs from useless pieces of plastic back into your e-mail.