It’s been 12 hours since I signed up for and installed Carbonite’s online backup client on my home PC and things are working well.
What I like so far:
There are a couple of features that have impressed me so far and they are:
- How easy the install was. Honestly I think this is the fastest easiest install I have ever seen.
- The Carbonite client is intelligent enough to work on [Windows] systems that are using Fast User Switching and those that do not. That is, the backup is not terminated when you log off or switch users. It also seems to grab all of the documents from all users.
- The simplicity of the backup. There are no configuration options (none!) to make things complicated.
- I can use my system (old slow laptop – Intel Pentium III @ 897 MHz) without seeing much in the way of a slow down as a result of the backup. I will keep in mind that this is the initial backup I am talking about and there is no real processing going on, just uploading, so it should be light on resources.
- One cool “looking” feature is that it seems like you can set priorities on files for backup. If I understand this feature I can say that my Accounting data takes highest priority and as a result will get backed up before my recently add browser bookmarks… I think that’s the idea but I’m not sure.
What I don’t like so far:
- I have no options! Yes I said this was a good thing but I do like to have some options.
- The progress indicator is bit vague for me. Yes it is telling me how far along it is in terms of file counts and data transfered but what about connection speed and expected duration? I also like to see per file progress (I could spend hours watching progress bars and analyzing throughput).
- Where is the log file? What has been uploaded so far?
- There is a lot of extra stuff that is getting backed up that I think is a waste of time space and bandwidth. Un-selecting this stuff is a bit too tedious for me. I know it as all you can eat for the low low price of $4.95/month but being forced to be a pack rat is NOT a good thing. I have seen a LOT of systems where this stuff is migrated to a new computer and does it ever slow things down (and confuse) the new system. This ties into being able to set priorities for backup. If it wasn’t uploading so much junk I wouldn’t need to worry about prioritizing my data?
The complaints aside I like what I see. The absolutely painless install and configuration are great. The lack of features is not so great but I’m not your average computer user either (I’m also not a hack, geek or nerd).
Things that I am still curious about are how it handles the incremental backups. I, like most people, have a lot of email in several Outlook PST files. I am hoping that it does not need to upload the whole file each day and I am also wondering how many versions I get to hold on to. Time will tell.
According to my calculations it will take about 2.5 days for the backup to complete. I’ll keep you posted on how things went.
Until then.
Mike Lavender
Owner/CEO of Simply Offsite
Simply Offsite
Simplifying backup since 1998
http://www.simplyoffsite.com
Filed under: Online backup services, Reviews, Windows, backup, computer backup | Tagged: backup service reviews, Carbonite, online backup, Online backup services, Reviews
Hi Mike – thanks for the kind words about Carbonite! I just wanted to address a few of your questions and concerns.
First of all, regarding incremental backups for files like your .pst file. Carbonite backs up the entire file initially just once, and then from that time on just backs up the changes daily. This saves time backing up while still keeping the file up to date.
Carbonite stores versions so that you can “roll back” to a prior incarnation of the file. There will be a version available for each of the past seven days, and then one per week for each of the three weeks prior, and then one per month for each of the two months prior to that. So you can go back a total of three months, but the closer to the present you go, the more precision you have available.
(If no changes were made for one of these “version buckets”, we skip it so that you aren’t confused by seven versions that are identical – but we make sure that at the very least there is a previous version to roll back to even if no changes were made for months.)
Regarding backing up “too much”, you can change that. The fastest and easiest way is just to right-click your C: drive icon and say “Don’t back this up” (to unselect everything at once), and then right-click just the folders that you want and select “Back this up”. For example, you may just want to back up two user profiles on your computer, so you may unselect everything, and then just go to the \Documents and Settings\ folder and right-click the user profile folders you want and select “Back this up”.
Regarding customization, if you click on the “lock” icon in your system tray/notification area, you will open the Carbonite InfoCenter. Click on the Set Options button and you can find options to handle whether to display colored dots, whether to reduce bandwidth used (by selecting “Low Priority”), and a tab in which you can set schedules for exactly when you wish to back up (or not back up).
As for log files, you can either view the carbonite.log file (located in the program folder), or you can hold down the right shift key on your keyboard while clicking the lock icon in your system tray/notification area and select “View History”.
I hope this information helps you in your evaluation. Feel free to write me if you have additional questions.
Sincerely,
Len Pallazola
Manager, Customer Service Systems
Carbonite, Inc.
http://www.carbonite.com
Thanks for the information Len.
When I was a customer of Mozy, they had an option to pay extra to get a DVD cut of all data backed up on their SAN.
Looking at the Carbonite site, you don’t appear to offer this option.
I will have one machine with 8GB, another with 6GB on Carbonite and a 3rd machine with 30GB I’m considering moving to Carbonite.
If something happens to a machine, I would not want to wait several days to restore 6+ GB – will or does Carbonite have a service for creating DVD’s to overnight to a customer?
Carbonite doesn’t currently offer that as a service but it’s been requested a number of times and may be offered in the future. The biggest issue is the encryption we use. Our encryption is such that even staff here can’t view your data. Can’t view also means can’t copy to a DVD for you, so there’s some background mechanics and logistics that will need to be worked out first so that we’re not sacrificing security for convenience. I’ll bring this up with our design team again though so they’re reminded that a DVD option is important to folks.
Sincerely,
Len Pallazola
Manager, Customer Service Systems
Carbonite, Inc.
Thanks Len for quick and thoughtful reply.
I wonder if it is possible to have the Carbonite application read a DVD and manage encryption & restore via the application.
I enrolled in Carbonite 2 months ago. When I needed to restore some files, tech support was unable to. After 3 weeks I received an email: “your data was unrecoverable during the server downtime due to a power failure. I have added free 6 months on to your account to make up for this.” How come they don’t have a backup for their own system? Am I screwed or is there anything I can do about this? I don’t want 6 more months of a service they can’t provide.
Thanks for the post
I am on a mac and started my initial download in March and come July it is still doing the INITIAL backup. It is a large backup at about 300gb. Seemed to stall in June after getting 250gb in. It would do about 5-6 gb a day, and I did notice some bandwidth lag and still do, eventhough it has not done much in 2 months. I like the idea and concept and generally like the actual backing up. I did have some rather tedious customer service support over billing. Support Chat and email seemed to be either non-human or at least non-english native because all I ever got was overly polite canned answers and never could talk to a live person to get my problems answered.
My Carbonite backup is now at 4 days (96 hours and Counting) with 58% down and 22 % to go. It’s slower than I expected by I guess it will be worth it in the lomg run.
are you on a 2 GB free account or the unlimited one? 4 days for 2 GB is pretty slow, assuming that you have high speed internet!
Unlimited – 59 GB so far 20.5 GB to go