Carbonite Online PC Backup - PC review

Comments

• Here is a detailed review of online backup companies, including Carbonite:
  
  http://www.backupreview.info/2008/02/02/carbonite/ Posted by Online Backup, USA
• I am wondering how they handle the outlook.pst file. Many have very large pst files (1+ GB). The file is changing everytime to receive, send or delete an email or calendar items. Does Carbonite backup the full file everytime? If they do then everyday they might try to backup this file a few times. Do they have the technology to find only the "blocks" of data in the file that have changed and send those? If so when I restore a version do they piece it togather? Can they guarantee the file integrity? I was trying to get an answer from Carbonite but it was not clear. Posted by Moshe, USA
• Yes, Moshe, Carbonite backs up your Outlook file incrementally, and guarantees the integrity of the restored file using a cryptographic checksum. You can always try the free trial and restore your data to make sure it works well for you. Posted by Gordon, USA
• If you're looking at Carbonite, be aware that many people have had problems restoring their data. Do your research, first. A few others which may be worth looking at are Mozy and BackBlaze
  
  http://www.onlinebackupsreview.com/reviews.php
  Posted by Online Backups Review, USA
• although i like carbonite, i really wish they would offer "cloud" accessible storage. the most useful function is for me to access my files when i am not at my pc. instead i have to carry around a usb key with all of my files.
  i would pay an extra $5 a year for this Posted by james murphy, uk
• Help! Carbonite ate my wedding video, and the video of my child learning to swim! Even after trial period, video files are not by default backed up. In their CURRENT online info, if you dig, you find the following:
  
  "The default backup does not include programs, system files, temporary files, videos, or individual files greater than 4GB."
  
  Hidden behind programs and system files. Ouch.
  
  Worse, you have to explicitly and individually mark every folder from which you want videos backed up, and it only does one level, not subfolders. So each time you shoot a video and load to a folder on your disk drive, you have to remember to explicitly mark that folder.
  
  So much for the "Completely Automatic" that they claim!
  
  Who doesn't want to keep their home movies? I thought I was protected. And now that my disk crashed, I'm left stuck. And my wife is pretty sad (and angry) as well.
  Posted by Kevin N, USA
• James: We do have cloud-accessible storage! Go to www.carbonite.com, and click the Remote Access tab in the upper right corner of the home page.
  
  Dave Friend, CEO
  Carbonite, Inc. Posted by David Friend, USA
• Kevin: I'm sorry your home movies didn't get backed up. You're not the first person to make that mistake. In the next major release, we're going to be very proactive about reminding users when there might be valuable videos that are not getting backed up.
  
  Let me explain why we have this video policy, because a couple of years ago we did include all videos in the default backup, and it created even worse problems. Unfortunately, home movies constitute only a tiny percentage of the videos that are on users' PCs. Mostly what you find are huge collections of commercial movies, probably downloaded off the Internet (and many with unprintable file names!). It was not uncommon to find people with more than 500GB of videos. At 2-4GBs/day, the maximum upload speed of a standard DSL, it would take months to back up all this stuff. Meanwhile, important files, like family pictures and movies, office documents, email, and so forth can be stuck in the queue. When a user's PC crashed, we would get letters like "You backed up all my junk TV shows, but you didn't back up my Quicken files?" Backing up subfolders doesn't help, because inevitably people just selected all the movies thinking "Carbonite is unlimited, so why not?" and we were back to the same problem.
  
  The best solution is better warnings and communications with the user. Maybe someday we'll figure out how to automatically distinguish between a valuable home movie and last week's installment of House.
  
  Dave Friend, CEO
  Carbonite, Inc. Posted by David Friend, USA
• Have been using carbonite for about a year now and find it great, haven't tried to transfer info to a new computer yet though so we'll see. My data is so valuable that I also run Sugar sync in parallel. And I have a remote computer backed up with a copy of all data as well. I even take a portable HD copy every 3 months as well instead of total everything failure!
  What you do need to be aware of is that the more integrated your backup, the larger the potential to delete files across a range of computers inadvertently. For example, your laptop is stolen, some crazy deletes your folders and seeing this, some backup software deletes the online files and the clone copies on other computers..therefore they are all gone!
  Also check whether backup recreates the file structure when you restore files, or just puts it in a big bucket. The big bucket approach may take you years to rebuild into a file structure! Posted by ajb, uk
• Yes i knew that carbonite would backup the files Posted by Private Detective, India
• Carbonite one among the best backup remover
  Spy shop
  Posted by Spyshop, India
• Do you realise that Carbonite exposes ALL your files which are private / not shared to all users via the Carbonite Backup Folder and they cannot offer any solution to this. I am running Vista SP1 and all Carbonite could advise me was to contact Microsoft at 46 uk pounds a throw!!! This is incredibly serious as it undermines Vista's security / privacy between users. Posted by Gail , UK
• Dear Mr. Friend, CEO,
  
  I'm having an AWFUL experience with my Carbonite. I have had several online chats and even a remote access/phone conversation with your customer service. Still having the same problem...backup in progress when NOTHING appears to be actually happening. I'll be looking for a different service soon. Posted by Presten Petersen, USA
• Do NOT use carbonite!
  
  I've been a Carbonite for almost 2 years and found out just the other day that their "automatic" backup doesn't include videos! This wasn't the case before, and they changed their policy without informing anyone!
  
  Reading David Friend's comments - ever thought of including an optionf or users to backup videos or not; and when ticking the box saying "Yes, do back up those 20 year old videos that I took when my kids were born" it alerts you that this may slow things down?
  
  Time to move to another service for me; just need to find one that does the trick (Mozy seems ok, or backblaze... or the one F-Secure owns... or really ANYTHING BUT CRAPONITE!)
  
  M. Posted by Papu, England
• One solution I have for the video backup - I open windows explorer and do a search for *.avi in my video folder where I store all videos. All of the videos come up and I mark them for backup by carbonite.
  
  I try to do this whenever I load new video on my computer.
  
  I did lose some videos in a crash back in March (small videos from a digital camera) because of this issue. Posted by Charley, USA
• What does carbonite backup? does it back up your system files and operating system? Posted by DAVID PATRICK, USA
• I have read that people have had problems restoring from sratch when their PC dies. After settin up Carbonite on the new pc it will start to backup to new pc overwriting the prevous backup. Has someone found a way to stop this happening. eg, putting Carbonite into restore mode before completion the reinstallation of the software on the new pc Posted by Rick, USA