Tag Archives: mozy web access

Yesterday, we shared the news about a big overhaul to the Mozy web interface for accessing your files. In that blog entry, we mainly talked about how Mozy Web Access adds more features to Mozy Stash. Today we want to share what new features this update brings for anyone who uses Mozy to protect their personal and professional files–even if you don’t have Stash.

Mozy has two continuing goals for Web Access. One is to provide you with a simple, straightforward way to access the files you need from any device that has a standards-compliant web browser. The other is to ensure that you can recover from a data loss catastrophe swiftly and confidently. Today we examine several ways that this update addresses the latter of those two goals.

Emergency Restore
Something you’ll notice right away about the new interface is that Mozy has adapted it to emphasize what our customers tell us is their most frequent reason for logging onto the Mozy web site: accessing a file they need while on the go. But in shifting focus toward access, we did not want to impede your ability to react to a crisis (whether loss, theft, disk failure or an errant can of Red Bull). Let’s face it: when in such a situation, we’re typically not in our calmest states of mind. We need a fast path to recovery.

When you find yourself scrambling to get your data back, log onto the Mozy website and look for Emergency Restore at the top right of the web access screen. Use it to launch the new Restore Wizard, and you’re on your way.

Restore Wizard
When you need to restore all your data files after a computer loss, the new Restore Wizard will guide you through seven steps to recovery. After launching the wizard from the Emergency Restore icon, you define a few quick details about what you want to restore, and then select whether you want to use the Restore Manager to stream the files as a download or have Mozy expedite them to you by postal service.

Restore Manager
The Mozy Restore Manager simplifies the task of downloading files from Mozy. It runs on your computer, and ensures that interruptions—such as a network outage or computer restart—don’t force you to start downloading your restore all over again.

As mentioned above, you can use it from the Restore Wizard to facilitate a complete system restore. But you can also use Restore Manager even for ad hoc file retrieval. For example, say you want to download a whole folder of photos from Web Access. Instead of direct downloading the whole thing as an archive (.zip), you can use the Restore Manager by clicking More Download Options in the Actions panel after selecting the folder. As with a system restore, this gives you a way to recover from an interruption, such as a network outage

Lastly, Restore Manager is particularly handy if you use a personal key to custom-encrypt your backups, because Restore Manager will decrypt your files as it downloads them. That’s something that a direct download from Web Access cannot do.

Summary
Overall, the latest updates to Web Access give you multiple ways to restore your data. You can direct-download any file by selecting and choosing download. You can also direct-download an archive file of multiple files or folders. Use the Restore Manager to download it, which is handy for large sets of files or files from a custom-encrypted backup. And finally, you can use Emergency Restore for a complete system restore.

Until next time, be safe,

–Ted
Mozy Product Management

Mozy Stash just got a whole lot better. Since the debut of Stash, one of the most frequently requested features from beta users has been for a way to upload files from the web. Now with Mozy Web Access, you can.

Let’s take a fast tour of some new features in Mozy Web Access.

1. A tab for your Stash, and a Devices tab for your backups. Now you can easily access all of the files you protect with Mozy through a single web interface.
2. A breadcrumb widget shows you where you are in the folder heirarchy, allowing you to jump back up to any parent folder.
3. Switch from the default list view to a gallery view, and you can see thumbnails for each photo.
4. The Actions panel changes dynamically depending on what you have selected. (More on this below.)
5. You can select multiple files or folders
6. Summary information about your selection shows in the footer.

As mentioned in the above list, different actions show in the actions panel, and that’s where you will find some great new features only available in your Stash:

• Upload allows you to upload to the current folder
• Create new folder lets you add a folder
• Delete allows you to remove a file from your Stash

To be sure, this is just the first batch of Stash features we have added to Mozy Web Access. We look forward to adding more capabilities, such as renaming files or folders, or allowing you to move them as you need.

In addition to the new features for Stash, many of the new features in Web Access are available for files protected with classic online backup, too. Image thumbnails (as shown above), multi-file download, the actions panel, and many other new features work similarly when browsing files on your backed up device. I’ll cover more about general new features tomorrow in a follow up post.

Be safe, and happy stashing,

–Ted
Mozy Product Management