Carbonite's kick-ass backup solution

I stumbled upon Carbonite just over a month ago. The service worked flawlessly during the 15-day trial and now I've signed up for a two year subscription. Carbonite is the closest to a true "install and forget" I've come across for backup to internet. Oh, and I had a chance to test out the "Restore Mode" after some hard disk problems and found it a breeze. Highly recommended.

I agree. I have been using Carbonite for 2-3 months. Support is pretty quick and very helpful. No negatives to report. The service just works.

Except for their site is down. Not a promising sign in a backup company.

Hehe Carbonite site is down. I hope they backup their files too.

XP only!!!

Careful with the term 'best'! I've been looking for a while and have been using Mozy (free) on select files. I was close to pulling the trigger on paying $$ to mozy to backup all my files when I found carbonite about 4 days ago (I just uninstalled it from my machine today!)

Carbonite Cons!
* Can't backup USB or Network Drives
* Can schedule when the backups will take place. It trickles ALL day!
* Buggy install/SW. Files I selected never took and then suddenly they did and MORE??
* Keys are kept by Carbonite which is ok for gen users (like mom) but I worry about my stuff :)

The idea @ carbonite is great I just wish they had the SW like Mozy to go with it. I'm guessing Mozy/others will follow but for now, I'll stick with my 2+G free backup from Mozy and wait.

I agree the install was a big buggy. But since then I've not had any trouble (2 months of use). My only gripe is that I can't tell Carbonite to backup everything "now". I don't leave my notebook PC on all the time (it's my primary system) and sometimes when I boot up Carbonite is telling me my system needs to be backed up. There's no way to do a backup before shutting down.

Yes they were down, but I recieved an email about 12 hours before the outage stating they were going to have a planned outage. I don't think they ever updated their website to reflect this, which I think they should have.

"Notice of planned system upgrade

Dear Carbonite user:

We are bringing up a new data center in Massachussets on Wednesday, Sept. 20, starting at 8PM EDT. Backups will be paused until 7am the next morning when they will resume automatically. During this period you will not be able to restore files from backup. We apologize for the inconvenience.

The Carbonite web site will also be down during this period and will not be accepting new signups. A notice to that effect will be posted on the web site.

The Carbonite Team "

Hello all, I work for Carbonite. First of all, Ryan, thanks for the nice writeup. And thanks to all those who posted flattering comments, we're glad you like the service. A few things to note:

(1) We had SCHEDULED downtime last night from 9pm-3am for a major infrastructure overhaul and the addition of a BIG new datacenter. We were supposed to have a page up on the site telling people that but we dropped the ball on that one - d'oh!

(2) MAC --- We won't be XP only for long - MAC PRODUCT ON ITS WAY!! Please email beta@carbonite.com with subject "MAC BETA" if you want to be a beta tester.

(3) We will release a pro version later this year which will allow backup of USB drives, let you keep your own keys, schedule backups if you must, etc. etc. Stuff to keep the techies happy :-) But we're committed to simplicity and ease-of-use, hence the one price fits all pricing and the minimal UI.

I'll be back later to respond to comments...thanks!

Could you please tell me what Windows theme that is?

Have you tried Data Deposit Box? It is completely "set it and forget it". It's the best online program tool I have found.

http://www.datadepositbox.com

Well, well, I happen to find Carbonite service is poor. Maybe I am just used to the high-end backup applications like DriveHQ WWWBackup (www.drivehq.com).

Anyway, here is my review of Carbonite: It cannot be even called "Backup". Its features are very limited and lots of bugs and design flaws. It is not good for any professional users.

The cons:
-- only supports XP;
-- cannot backup network drive;
-- cannot add folders, have to navigate all folders to add files!!!
-- cannot backup my personal video files larger than 2GB;
-- the progress bar doesn't move when backing up a big file!

The most crappy part is: it doesn't even let you set a schedule! This has to be the worst. It also doens't have version history.

The only pros:
The interface is beautiful. It prompted me to at least give it a try.

Well, the interface is misleading... it can easily fool users to believe it is good. When you actually want to get something done, that interface doesn't help.

Data Deposit Box seems to be overpriced when compared to Carbonite. I mean you can write a client for Amazon's s3 service and have 20cents per gigabyte per upload then just 15 cents per gig per month (that's compared to 10 bucks @ DDB). I have been hestitant however to sign up for Carbonite because of concerns listed already here (they hold the key and cannot backup USB drives), but it looks like they're workin on these additional issues so I'm closer to pulling the trigger on a 2 year plan with Carbonite.

Another concern: how long are they going to be around?

Anyway, my plan is to build my own redundant storage server (something like a RAID 5) with some cheap software but eventually adding something like Carbonite for cloud backup.

Another point against Carbonite:

You must pay for a subscription for EACH COMPUTER that you own. So if you want to backup from 3 or 4 PCs, that's 3 or 4 separate subscriptions. Ouch.

I guess I'm the perfect Carbonite customer. Not a techie. Computer always on and connected. No usb drives or network drives to backup. For $5/month I get additional peace of mind, on top of whatever other backups I may or may not do.

It was worked well. I've never noticed it getting in the way. I've never had to call in for service. I tried restore a couple of times for grins -- no problem.

All my work files are on my laptop and my desktop, but photo/music backup has always been a nightmare.

They know what their product is (and isn't). I've found it one of the cleanest/simplest solutions I've ever used.

I was using Carbonite for about two months and it was great. I had some minor problems with the installation but once you get a feel for it it seems to be a nice backup solution. However, I switched to Windows Vista and since then I basically can't use it. I wanted to restore few files but I couldn't open Carbonite folder in My Computer. All I can do it access properties there? Any ideas?