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Brad's favorite apps worth paying for: Carbonite
Recently someone I know, (I'm not going to name names, but his is an anagram for Brand Idler), may have accidentally wiped his wife's hard drive while trying to reinstall Windows XP. Sure, he backed everything up to a USB hard drive first so he could restore all of her important documents, media, and other files. But the hard drive was faulty and an awful lot of important data was unrecoverable.
This problem could have been easily avoided if Mr. Idler and his wife had spent a few bucks on Carbonite before the accident instead of signing up shortly after. Once installed on your computer, Carbonite will go to work backing up everything in your documents folders and any other oflder you specify. Items that are backed up will have a little green dot next to them, while items that are not yet backed up have a yellow dot. It can take a few days to perform your initial backup, but once that's completed subsequent backups go very quickly. And everything happens in the background so you can use your computer normally while backups are in process.
While you may still want to backup your files locally in case you need to restore them quickly or on short notice, knowing that all of your files are safely stored online and accessible from anywhere in the world provides quite a bit of piece of mind. Carbonite provides you with unlimited online storage space for $50 a year. You can get a discount if you sign up for two or three years in advance.
Carbonite is availble for Windows. There's also a beta version available for Mac users.
Comments
21
Subscribe to commentsRazorDOct 13th 2008 5:40PM
I tried Carbonite but settled on Mozy, and i would never look back.
Did you every try Mozy?
Only $5 a month per computer, and its just small, simple and perfect. Handles my two machines and 160gb backup set fantastically!
PeterOct 13th 2008 6:08PM
RazorD - I second the vote for Mozy. Mozy is one of those few applications that just works. You configure it and it continues to do its thing in the background without interfering with your normal work. Restores are easy and they offer real versioning.
The only complaint I've ever had about Mozy is that they throttle uploads at 1 Mb/sec. I'm using the free account and I've been unable to get a straight answer from them if paid accounts are throttled or not.
RazorDOct 13th 2008 6:53PM
Grah, was supposed to reply to your comment with this:
I use it on both windows and mac, and i think they only throttle it on mac? I've never been able to get 1MB/s so i don't know, but i always thought if you set it to 1MB/s it wasn't throttled?
There is one other thing to try, get SQLLite Database Browser and open /Library/Application Support/Mozy/state.db (back it up first!) and in there, go to settings and you'll see the 1MB/s throttle listed. You can manually change that and hit save, then try uploading. I have no idea if this works, as i'm not fast enough. But so long as you dont open mozy config and change the setting, it should stay there :)
PeterOct 14th 2008 10:28AM
RazorD - Thanks for the info. I modified that setting but it didn't seem to make a difference, it still remained capped at 1 Mb/sec. I'm on a 10/2 Fios line so I know it can upload faster.
It's not that big a deal, it's only an issue the first time when you have a huge amount of data to move.
PeterOct 15th 2008 12:11PM
If anyone is interested in trying Mozy, you can use my referral code for an extra 512 megs of storage for free.
Thanks.
https://mozy.com/?code=F5AS78
RazorDOct 13th 2008 6:53PM
(Sorry if this double posts.. i dont think my first reply worked..)
I use it on both windows and mac, and i think they only throttle it on mac? I've never been able to get 1MB/s so i don't know, but i always thought if you set it to 1MB/s it wasn't throttled?
There is one other thing to try, get SQLLite Database Browser and open /Library/Application Support/Mozy/state.db (back it up first!) and in there, go to settings and you'll see the 1MB/s throttle listed. You can manually change that and hit save, then try uploading. I have no idea if this works, as i'm not fast enough. But so long as you dont open mozy config and change the setting, it should stay there :)
BillOct 13th 2008 9:27PM
Mozy all the way.
PabbyOct 13th 2008 9:28PM
Never really liked Carbonite. Too slow and clunky. I paid for a years' subscription and barely used it.
Mozy I used for some time. Had over 600GB stored on there with no problems, but Mozy's client software is junk and it has problems quite often too. 'Reticulating Spines' ... god that gets old.
Right now I've settled on Dropbox...they only offer 50GB paid accounts but larger ones are coming. You can sync all your machines or just use one PC and back all your stuff up to the cloud. They use S3 for storage and there's no throttle on uploads. Not as cheap per month as Mozy or Carbonite but I like it better.
james 42Oct 13th 2008 10:48PM
I've been running Carbonite for a couple of years now with little trouble. But I've not had to restore any data from it yet and that is where the rubber meets the road. I have heard nothing but good things about Mozy and probably would go with them if I were not already with Carbonite. I've got my important data on four drives, one of which lives off site, so I probably will never need to put it to the test. But $50 a year is cheap insurance.
KenyaOct 13th 2008 11:50PM
I tried Mozy and looked at Carbonite, but settled on Jungle Disk. Mozy on the Mac was a CPU hog and the upload times were much slower. It took about half the time to back up what I had on Mozy with Jungle Disk and I am able to mount my online backup as a disk.
Sir LoinOct 14th 2008 2:23PM
Agreed about JungleDisk! It's awesome and runs smooth as buttah. The mounted network drive is definitely a plus.
Eagle117Oct 14th 2008 9:06AM
I'm a Mozy user as well. I've done restores a couple of times to get my pictures while I'm at work and it has been flawless. Great application to set it and forget it.
Brett29Oct 14th 2008 9:33AM
Many of the online backup and sync companies are re-packaging and RE-SELLING Amazon's S3 storage at hefty markups.
If you buy your storage DIRECTLY from Amazon, you can get up to 50 TB (yes, terabytes !!) for 15 cents per month, based on their recently announced rates (eff. Nov. 1).
Does $1.80 per YEAR interest anyone?
You'll need a front-end software package to access S3 and schedule backups. Jungledisk is an excellent paid option, but if you search the web, there are also free software solutions out there.
sybgtwyOct 14th 2008 9:57AM
So, ran the numbers for Jungle Disk.
Call 1000Gb for my four machines at home. Assume 25000 individual files, one upload request per file. The initial upload for Jungle Disk
(1000 * (.15 + .10)) + ((25000 / 1000) * 0.01) = $250.25
For one upload request for all 25k files, assuming they land safely the first time:
$250.00
Cost of 1Tb per month, sitting there:
$150.
I seriously doubt Amazon is selling 50Tb for 15 cents. At those rates, it becomes worth it to write your own s/w to hit it, and store your Blue-Ray discs there.
Brett29Oct 14th 2008 10:10AM
Here's a link to Amazon's November 1st rates. 15 cents for 50 TB, and then it gets even lower for more storage. Check for yourself:
http://aws.amazon.com/s3/#pricing
Of course there are additional charges for Transfers and Put/Post requests - but for the typical home user who simply wants to maintain backups of important files (monthly, daily) from his hard drive, these additional costs are tiny.
Brad LinderOct 14th 2008 10:11AM
That's $.15 per gig for the first 50TB. In other words, up to $750.
Brett29Oct 14th 2008 10:18AM
Brad :
You're 100% correct ! - and I mis-read the new rate chart. My apologies to all.
However, I still think it is prudent for those with low volume / low frequency backup needs to compare the total cost of buying S3 space directly from Amazon vs. from Re-Sellers.
HaploOct 14th 2008 9:49PM
An article about how secure are online backup services, only Mozy and Carbonite came on top.
I've been using carbonite for a year, never had any problems, runs smoothly, doesn't interfere with your browing... and Han Solo was frozen in Carbonite, so there :)
http://www.heise-online.co.uk/security/Some-online-backup-services-insecure--/news/110771
HaploOct 14th 2008 9:39PM
Oh
HaploOct 14th 2008 9:49PM
Oh,