Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Site news from Mediamax

The following is from the official Mediamax blog. See:
http://mediamaxblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/site-news.html

You can't leave comments there, so leave them here.

---quote begins

Site news

We've made a lot of progress this week and wanted to share that with you.

We're making a lot of progress in improving upload performance. Not only is uploading faster, but fewer uploads are failing. The site will now, once again, re-try your command instead of having your upload fail. As a result, we've seen a 20% increase in the number of uploads per day. There's always room for improvement, so we'll keep pushing for improved performance everyday.

Our data recovery project is moving along on schedule. This project will be completed in 5-7 weeks.

Finally, we've restored the automated granting of downloads to all accounts.

To keep users better informed on site status we'll be creating a second blog that will be dedicated to site maintenance. We'll be debuting the maintenance blog within the next two days.

Thanks for your support and business!

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

I couldnt care less about uploads. I just want to get back the 90% of my files that these idiots have lost.

Anonymous said...

I can't even look at the files I have there now. So I don't really care about uploads. I seriously doubt I'll ever see those files again.

Anonymous said...

another 5 - 7 weeks for recovery. This was said a couple of weeks ago also. I wonder if this has anything todo with the introduction of nirvanix?
Uploading still works with lots of problems. Had to upload same file yesterday 6 times to receive it and it is very slow so fixed I doubt it

Mike Murphy said...

Cut your losses and get out while you can. This ship is going down. Don't keep throwing good money into a bad service.

Mike

Anonymous said...

You're wrong JD ... a week ago they said 6-8 weeks so 5-7 is indeed on track. Now to see if they keep the pace and ofcourse manage to recover all that has been lost.

Uploading is going a little better I have to admit, but they're taking their sweet time with that FTP service of theirs.

Don't know if more people are affected, but I can't send anything at all with my account and my login in MediaMax XL is refused and I'm 100% that I got it right.

Nate said...

Hey I see I'm not the only one fed up with this disaster. Are you guys getting billed through paypal and then having service cancelled due to non payment? Let me know of ANY other service because I am ready to move my hosted files to a reliable site!!!

Anonymous said...

Why all this talk of uploads, if you can't even view or retrieve your downloads????

This is crazy. I just want my files - I want to escape the Titanic before it sinks completely.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said "... a week ago they said 6-8 weeks so 5-7 is indeed on track."

Well they would say they are on track wouldnt they. The trouble is you can't believe anything they say. They have barely uttered a word of truth in 6 months.

And Mike, I can't wait to 'cut my losses and get out' except they have the only copy of some of the files I need. These files were uploaded to my paid account by other people just before mediamax executed their brilliant 'auto-trash' program.

The main problem with mediamax has been that they simply do not adequately test things before they initiate them. Some bozo comes up with an idea and before you can say 'oops' its announced and inflicted upon us poor account holders. So when they say they are on track with the recovery program how can we trust that they are achieving anything useful this time?

I keep checking my files daily to see if anything has become 're-available' but, so far, nothing. Anyone seen any benefits from this recovery program yet?

Anonymous said...

Not to downplay the problems with downloads (or rather the unavailability of previously uploaded files) in the slightest as god knows I got plenty of those, MediaMax is, or rather pretends to be a online storage service. In that respect it's nothing less then bewildering that one of the core featues, being able to upload stuff you want to store, is severely broken. I've actually got another HD just to keep collecting stuff I wanted to upload.

According to MMs own statements they're still on track (btw, I was the first anonymous), but let's face it MMs trackrecord on making their selfimposed deadlines isn't exactly stellar ... I'm sure you remember them editing their post for 3 days in a row pushing back the time/date when their website would be back up. I asssume MM thinks they can do it in 5 weeks, but have given themselves a margin of 2 weeks in case things aren't going their way.

As for the recovering succes ... some files that were reported to me being unavailable are available again. How this relates to their recovery process or possibly standard server maintenance is anyones guess.

I hear you about the testing business. How in the world could they have missed the whole business with the odd characters in filenames if they had done some proper testing?

Unknown said...

My files showed on the Mediamax XL, but i could only download some of the file (5%) of what i have.

Unknown said...

The current customer can't get there files. Why the heck would you care to look into upload function now? Who is the project manager for this? He/She need to be fire. Focus on what's broken first you ass.

TruthBTold said...

I am not a happy camper. I just spent an hour and a half downloading stuff (or rather trying to do so) and guess what? A few minutes before it was supposed to be completed, a popup told me that there was an error. This has happened continually over the last few weeks. As a matter of fact, non-loading is the norm rather than the exception. Can anyone say "REFUND?"

Anonymous said...

Well for whatever that progress was worth I'm looking at a "Service Unavailable" message ... and I'm told that it's been popping up and down for most of this weekend.

Anonymous said...

From their site blog dated August 22nd
To keep users better informed on site status we'll be creating a second blog that will be dedicated to site maintenance. We'll be debuting the maintenance blog within the next two days.

Thanks for your support and business!


So where are they hiding this 'maintenance blog'? Already three days overdue. Or is this yet another example of their failure to deliver?

And while I'm here, what's with their XL uploader? That has to be the buggiest, worst written piece of junk I've ever encountered. No surpise that MediaMax employ it in favour of something useful. It needs the power of a Cray Computer to run the damned thing, which then consigns your uploads to oblivion - when it hasn't stalled at 99%.

And despite their claimed improvements - uploads speeds are still like those of a snail on Mogadon.

Yours

One very disgruntled user.

Anonymous said...

Tried uploading friday and was able to upload 3 albums in a couple of hours without, read another post from somebidy was upping tv for 2 hours and it didn't arrrive at all. Can't test my files because i am locked from accnt (am using a free accnt now, first have to pay), they still won't answer my email
I have a very serious lack of confidence in this recovery process because they do a lousy job in communicating and testing their software. This morning I thought maybe the move to a new datacenter also implied they had less storage available so what better then a conventient programmer/operator error.
I am a member of a forum in which the admin reports still loads of archies missing so when terabytes can be recovered per day there should be someting visible by now and that is obviously not the case
Because of the forum I stay but very sceptical and for now not willing to pay anymore

Nate said...

Hey folks... I just started moving my podcast files to Clickcaster. Is Streamload/Media Max still in business? They cashed my Pay Pal money but shut me and apparently hundreds of others for "non-payment".

Also, you should contact Pay Pal to make sure Streamload/MediaMax doesn't dip in again after you cancel.

Anonymous said...

I am so mad. Just read this.

Dear peebs

We apologize for the delay in responding to your e-mail due to unexpected high volume of incoming e-mails that we have received.

We are sorry you no longer wish to continue with your MediaMax subscription. Your membership has been cancelled as requested.

We hope you will consider using Mediamax again if you ever need a place to store your media or receive files from your friends in the future.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any further questions.

Regards,
Alice
MediaMax Support
http://www.mediamax.com


That is not what I wanted. I just wanted to go back to a free account and not have my account closed. How dare they! I just wanted to stop the payment. My only consolation is that karma will get them. This universe rewards us all and MediaMax will get what it deserves in the end. *storms off*

Anonymous said...

Let’s see if I can answer these one at a time…

Peebs: as WillTRiker mentions in a later post some (millions actually) files have indeed been restored to accounts. We’re still 4-6 weeks from completing this project.
I’m assuming your username is “peebs” and have unlocked your account. The subscription should have been cancelled not the entire account. That was just a simple oversight by one of our CSR’s. My apologies. I will make sure to chastise that CSR. :p

Nate: let me know what your username is and I’ll check into why your payments aren’t posting. Sometimes PayPal doesn’t send us the username with the payment so we have to go through and post them manually.

Anonymous: We’ve been talking about uploads because there’s been significant progress made in that area since 6/30 when we began having issues. We went from doing almost no uploads for a couple of days to a few hundred GB and now we’re back to our normal volume which is about 800TB a day. That’s more (much more) than YouTube or MySpace.
We’ve also been discussing the inability to download files which, as I mentioned earlier to peebs will take 4-6 weeks to complete.

Beau: You’re right. That bozo who came up the “auto-trash” no longer works for us.

WillTRiker:

We are still on track. I’m glad to hear that some of your files have been returned.
Regarding testing, I agree with you. We’ve hired a new firm to do QA before products are released. We’ll also be giving access to users on our beta tester list and to members of our Community Advisory Group prior to General Availability.

Dai: We are very much focused on this and have an outside vendor who specializes in this doing the data recovery.

WillTRiker: Sorry about the “Service Unavailable” message this weekend. It effected 16.6% of users and involved a web server that went offline. It’s been corrected.

victor meldrew: That one’s my bad. The maintenance page would have been pretty static and wouldn’t have said anything beyond what the regular blog said. It seemed superfluous so I decided not to do it.

Jd: We have as much storage as we need, more that a PB in fact. No problema. It was indeed operator error and I mentioned before that person no longer works here. And yes, TB’s per day can be recovered but we’re talking a PB here. It’s one of the biggest storage systems in the world.

Nate: We don’t “dip into” people’s accounts to get PayPal payments. What actually happens is PayPal sends us money every month from your account just like Bill Pay at any bank. This is entirely different from paying by credit card where we would be physically charging your card every month. In other words, we don’t charge your PayPal account every month. The payment is automatically sent to us. If users want to stop paying us by PayPal they just need to cancel their recurring payment with PayPal.
And again, if you send me your username I can check into this.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I didn't mean 800TB a day in uploads. I meant 800GB.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Hood:

Yes, my username is peebs and I checked the account before coming here. It gave me a message saying that the account was locked and to contact support. I know from experience that wouldn't work.

So I logged in (my login info was there on the same screen) and it took me right back to where it's been since I refused payment on the account: the payment screen.

I'm just going around in circles with no resolution to this. If by some chance MM has recovered ALL the files (the deadline you mention is 4-6 weeks), I may consider paying for one more month just so I can get all my files off that account and close it for good.

Anonymous said...

Hi John, nice to see you returning to us once again.

About testing ... I sure hope you actually let a few users test your new gimmick as well (like you used to ... I have been actually a betatester for you in the past) as the more circumstances something is tested in, the better the chance it actually works for everybody when it's released. Also in my experience users allways manage to come up with ways to (ab)use something that weren't foreseen in official testing.

As for uploading. The volume of uploading VOLUME may back to what it was originally, but the system itself sure needs a lot more work. It took me 4 tries and I had altered the checksum of a file twice before it finally got processed and I have a couple more of those 'problem' files which simply doesn't seem to get accepted to MediaMax. Some other problems:

1) web batch upload doesn't work ... for me at least, 100% failure rate.

2) single file upload often will upload a file fully, but then the site refuses to go to the screen where it says "Upload successfull". Most of the times going to the file manager the files uploaded will be there, but not allways.

3) single file upload will set itself to 0 Kbyte uploaded of 0 Kbyte during transfer on occassion. Last time I looked the error message said that it couldn't connect to upload.asp

4) files that actually get to the "Upload succeeded" screen fail to show up in the file manager (got 2 600 MB files of those).

5) it seems more stable atm, but the upload server yesterday was wildly erratic. I saw my speeds going from 200Kbyte grinding to a complete stop and then pick up speed again and repeat at nausea.

Like I said ... there still is major fixing to be done in the uploading/processing area.

Anonymous said...

I gave up on uploading anything about a year ago when this fiasco started.

I just want to be able to search and download the files I already have up. Does the search work anymore or will it ever again? I can be looking a folder, type that exact name into the search box and come up with zero results. I can go back to the folder and as if by magic, I can actually click on a file, and download it. Shocking, no?

That's just bloody ridiculous. It'd probably be better to remove the search box just to stop torturing people with a false sense of hope.