Mozy Mac client beta watch

I've been a big fan of both Carbonite and Mozy ever since I investigated them for StorageMojo my other blog.

So I was very glad to hear that Mozy had released a beta Mac client, well ahead of Carbonite.

Every step you take, I'll be watching you Not a Police fan? The message holds.

I downloaded the Mozy beta client yesterday. It installed like any Mac app, quickly and easily. It puts a little lower-case letter "m" on the menu bar. From the drop down menu you can see backup status, show the status window, open the backup history and open the configuration window. They should add one more option as well.

I had a little trouble figuring out how to specify the backup schedule. I thought it would be in the configuration window, but no, it is the only thing in Mozy Preferences. So schedule should either be moved into the configuration panel or preferences should be added to the drop down menu.

Other than that minor hassle, set up was clean and quick.

So how does it work? That's the rub: it hasn't, yet. I configured it to run an evening backup or to run whenever the computer was inactive for 30 minutes or more. It keeps trying and it keeps failing.

I always get a "Backend server error (MozyServerError2)" message. The error message is hyperlinked to the relevant support page, which helpfully explains

Problem: Whoops. Our network must be experiencing some technical difficulties.

Solution: These problems usually resolve themselves within 24 hours. If they don't go away within that time frame, upgrade to the latest version of Mozy and try again.

Oh well. Its been more than 24 hours and I have the latest version of Mozy. They weren't kidding when they said this is a beta.

I'll keep watching and reporting on how it works.

Get two gigs free You don't have to buy anything to try it yourself. They give away two gigs of free capacity.

Update: Some Mac users have written in to say the beta works fine for them. Mozy wrote to tell me they know what my problem is and that it is fixed in the next release that they currently have in Q&A. I'm not beating up on Mozy for a beta that has a bug - that is what betas are for. I'm enthusiastic about remote backups such as Mozy and Carbonite offer and just want to see how they work.

Comments welcome, especially if you've figured out a workaround.