Happy Mezzo users, an endangered species ?

[frenchman]

As a user of Mezzo with a Exabyte Mammoth tape drive I have stayed current and recently installed Mezzo 4.5.1, a version that does not work properly on my system (french MacOS 9.2.2).
The loss of confidence in the whole thing has destroyed my whole backup strategy. A new revision of Mezzo is due soon, but for the moment I am backing up "by hand" on firewire drives. To make things worse, having a tape drive worth several thousand dollars sitting idle is giving rashes.

I have to say that despair drove me to the point of ordering the latest version of Restrospect, but from what I hear things ain't easy on that front either...

I will spare you the details at this stage, but I would like to hear from other users happy or unhappy. Are there some people happy with v4.5.1 ?

thanks for the feedback
Mark

[Magnetic]

It seems that Mezzo attracts flame wars, but I'll jump in to say we've been very happy with it. We're not using the Mammoth drive, but we do use the Exabyte/Ecrix VXA with no problems, both on OS 9 and OS X.

Has Mezzo tech support not been able to help you?

[jamiecer]

Just wanted to chime in. I've been using Mezzo for 4 years with a Sony DDS4 drive. I had problems when I first started using the program due to a bad SCSI case for my drive and incorrect settings on my ATTO card. After Steve Kellogg at Mezzo provide some clues as to what was wrong with my set-up, everything has been running great. Back ups are a piece of cake and I have yet to loose any data. I swear by Mezzo 4.5.2.

Jamie Cerniglia

[amiller]

4.5.1 or 4.5.2 has been ugly for us as well. I think we may have to just move to firewire drives soon. I've never seen a more "buggy" piece of software. 3.8.1 was so perfect too...
We use an Ecrix, VXA deal as well.

[David Schober]

agreed amiller,

I have made points to my Retrospect friends about not having to wonder if you got every drive backed up. (one of the best features of Mezzo...that it does that for you) But you're right. 3.8.1 was great. I'm so frustraed with this new version!

Question, ( I know this is the DUC, but while I have some Mezzo users attention...)
With the current version, when backing up up, the program will stall at an errors notification box and stay there all night sometimes, until you say "yeah...ok..I see you. Now get back to work you damn program. You should have been done by now!" Is there any way to have that dialog box come up at the end of backup and verify? It's so frustrating when I'm expecting a large backup to be finished by morning, only to see a list of transfer errors (who knows why...it never says. So it's useless info) anyway, seeing a list of transfer errors and then having to wait for the backup to finish! Is there any way around that?

[Pirate Post]

e-mail me privately and I'll tell you of my Mezzo issues.


[email protected]

[Natural Sound]

We have also abandoned Mezzo.
We've been there from almost the beginning. I fully support the effort and concept, but ever since PT 5 which required major changes in Mezzo, it's been a different ball game.

I still can not get PT and Mezzo to work together. Mezzo crashes PT, Rock breaks scissors.
Mezzo sometimes archives properly, sometimes not. (mostly not)
Indicator lights flash, but give erroneous info.
Mezzo retires tapes on a whim and a crash will render the tape useless.
Steve has always worked hard to plug up the problems, but it just seems that there's always one more snag that pops up.

We have not used Mezzo in almost 6 months. It was a little difficult at first. But by creating a protocol on how we record to the Hard Drives and the use of Firewire, Cd's and DVD's for archiving, It's working out very well. We're even getting good results using a little program built into the new Toast program called DejaVu. Plus, the archives are easily transferable to other studios that might not be using Mezzo.
Our Exabyte drive sits there motionless and is now only used to recall the occasional emergency tape.
So the drive is usually turned off, which is one more fan that we don't have going in the background.
All in all, Mezzo was fine in the early days, but now, we can transfer data faster to other media that can be easily read by others that Mezzo (in it's current form) is no longer needed.

[frenchman]

I am presently founding all my hopes on the "new" version mezzo 4.5.2, which seems to take its time coming

But my optimism is conterbalanced by the fact that long periods of silence from Mezzo usually end with a "new version available!!!!!!! update online for ONLY xxx$ etc" statement
New database management features in PT 6 makes me fear that.

That already happened with version 4.5. That was a paying version that added features promised when I updated from 3.8 to 4 originally...

If that happens I will just forget about it and stick to some straight backup software.

Mark Haliday

[Wolfgang Eller]

e-mail me privately and I'll tell you of my Mezzo issues.
[email protected]

Why not posting here. As Mezzo closed their forum (there was too many rants (or let´s say just rants) and I think they don´t like it) why not keep this threat alive as a Mezzo PT forum.
It is urgently needed to show Mezzo that their programm is not reliable at all (and if a programm has to be reliable then a backup prugramm).

Right now I´m working with the latest beta version from 7/11. So almost 4 months no new version and still a lot of bugs.

One example: after importing old v4 tapes Mezzo decides that the database is corupt, result: you always have to bring the daylie used tapes back in again and again.

From v4.5 on I stopped sending the bugs to Mezzo cause I´m fed up with doing the work of the beta testers, if there are any (Okay I´m using a beta version but the official release is unusable).

Everytime I reported a bug to Mezzo the first question was always: are there any problems with your SCSI chain.
And my answer was always: NO it´s the same since v3 (which worked very well) and the Eliant is working perfectly with Retro and my DLT perfectly with DVD studio pro and my Atto card is configured like it should be with PT.

In the end it always came out that it was a real bug and no problem with the SCSI chain (for example: deep scanning).

So please let this threat go on in the hope that Mezzo is reading it and that it will be again a reliable programm.

Cheers Wolfgang

[jai7388]

I had to put my two cents in. I was an avid user of mezzo until all the buggyness in 4.xxx , I then switched to retrospect for the stability. It's the only thing I can say better about retrospect. I do not like that I end up with 14 files for the same song for all the updates. I do not like that sometimes it doesn't keep all the snapshots in the main window and I have to search. But I do like that I have never lost 1 file since using it.

So my point. There is no real solution now that mezzo is a flake. Firewire with retrospect or other programs is nice but it still doesn't keep everything neat and tidy like mezzo. So, as you think about getting rid of it, think about the problems that come with the other software and the user maintenence you will have to do to get all your files to stay together. Then think of the buggyness of mezzo, which is less of a problem and allows you to work as a flow. I think now after using retrospect for a while mezzo might have been better. But, Im invested in retrospect and wont pay to update a buggy program.

Just my 2 cents.

Jai
"Love the Music in Yourself,
Not Yourself in the Music."