McAfee Online Back-up

1.0 stars

"Great idea, NOT friendly"

August 30, 2011  |   By MusicGeek23

Version: McAfee Online Back-up 1.0

Pros

Backs up data really well
Fantastic if you need to go back and un-delete files, previous versions. Background back up is well done and executed, worry free.
Easy Install

Cons

Actually RETRIEVING your data
Customer service

Summary

I purchased online backup after my laptop crashed and I had to pay for retrieval. Installed fine, was great. Ran it for about 9 months. Ran effectively in the background and didn't get in the way.

Then, laptop crashed again, the repair place wiped it. I didn't pay for retrieval because I had online back up.

I found I had about 90 GB of info backed up with McAfee. My initial response was to install the virtual drive and drag my files. When you install the program, you can see it when you click on 'My Computer'. I had a concern that this would delete my files since I was re-associating my licence with a clean machine.

I contacted customer service on line to be sure. After trying to ask my question in as many different ways as possible and nearly doing an action that would have erased my data on the advice of the hardly-English-speaking advisor, I was told to contact from the actual computer I would be using. I did this and finally got a different rep and then the answer I didn't want to hear. To restore my files I would have to go through the web-restore.

What 'web-restore' means is you request with a click through McAfee.com that you retrieve your files. Then you get an email saying they are ready. It took about a day. When that happens you log onto the McAfee website where you can download your files again. Here's the catch.

Your files are catalogued as 'Download Part 1" (1.8GB) "Download Part 2" (2.1GB). You cannot see what files of yours are IN these download packets so you can't prioritize the files and get the ones you need right away. Then, once you have downloaded the 'Part', you have to extract the files using their own extraction tool installed into the download. The downloads are EXTREMELY slow (it is taking me about 45 minutes to download a 1.8 GB file on a normally very fast internet connection) and the extraction takes about the same amount of time. For each file. So to get my roughly 90GB of info back, I have 57 files to download and extract. Then I have to put everything back where it was. And I can't prioritize because I don't know where anything is until it's downloaded and extracted (which is an hour and a half per file, times 59 files).

To top it all off, the file names are all named "restore_2011_08_29_11_34_(SeeminglyRandom7DigitNumber). Good luck trying to figure out which ones have been downloaded if one is interrupted or which ones you have extracted. Also, occasionally when they finally do come down I have duplicate files in the packets or the extractor is corrupt and I have to start again.

This is the ONLY way I can retrieve my information. It's going to take days and days to do this. There is no real indication of this anywhere on McAfee.

I recently purchased a WD Network drive that does backups as well for all the machines on my network and I will be using that from now on and cancelling my subscription to online backup as soon as I get all my files back (which will probably be about a week).

I would not recommend this in any way if you are backing up large quantities of data. It's not worth the hassle when there are easier and way faster ways to keep your information safe.

Reply to this review

Was this review helpful? (0) (0)