| Online Backup Review | |
Carbonite Backup: A Review of Carbonite |
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The Carbonite backup service gets its name from the fictional compound from Star Wars. Hans Solo was frozen in carbonite in Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Given the emphasis this online backup service gives to security, your files are probably just as indestructible as the compound it is named after! The Carbonite backup service encrypts your data files twice on your computer and then stores them encrypted on their secured data servers, making them virtually impossible to be compromised. Having your data files fully secured is certainly most important when considering an online backup service, but ease-of-use, customer support, and the ability to easily restore your backed up files are important too. After reading this full review of the Carbonite backup service, you’ll see why I gave it my “Editor’s Choice” award. This backup service isn’t perfect, but it met most of the criteria I looked for when choosing an online backup service to backup data on my own computers! Yes, I actually use Carbonite. I tried others but ultimately I stayed with Carbonite. Carbonite makes no distinction for home and business use as they only offer one service. While many small businesses will find Carbonite invaluable, it won’t always work because it lacks support for network drives. Carbonite is compatible with PCs and Macs. You can get started with the Carbonite backup service for just $54.95 for one year, and you can get it even cheaper if you sign up for a 2 or 3 year subscription. The company also offers a free 15-day trial which is a snap to try out because no credit card is required. (no credit card is required) |
| Reviews & Overview | |
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Expert & Customer Reviews:
Restoring files here and there was a snap, and the price is attractive. The company's serious approach to security is also commendable. -PCMag Carbonite can provide the equivalent of fireproof safety deposit box for digital content... -Associated Press Carbonite Online PC Backup is a worthy investment of time and money...a hands-off solution to backup up... -CNET It's the easiest online backup software to use - in fact, to not use, since it's completely automatic. -The New York Times It's so simple, anybody can use it. -Hiawath Bray, NPR ...completely automatic and stays entirely out of your way, quietly backing up whenever you're not working. -The New York Times This is a great product, all around. It was recommended to me by a friend and I can say it is worth every penny and I will be subscribing for years to come until there is something better out there. -Carbonite Customer I deleted a file (after having saved it elsewhere) and then went to restore it. It worked perfectly and was very intuitive. -Carbonite Customer Customer support is excellent. I have submitted several questions / suggestions. I usually get more than one reply. I even got an email from the CEO. Try to get that with Microsoft or Intuit. -Carbonite Customer Video files are not automatically backed up. They need to be individually selected by going into folders and sub-folders. Other than that it does what it promises and keeps it simple. -Carbonite Customer Setup was simple, initial upload was lengthy but I had 30GBs of data to backup so I wasn't too disappointed. -Carbonite Customer My Review of the Carbonite Backup Service Best For: Pros: Cons: It's obvious that Carbonite has a large emphasis on security - and rightfully so. If anyone's data was comprised, they would likely be out of business pretty fast. With double-encryption, your files are virtually impossible to be compromised when using Carbonite backup. Secondary to security is the company's emphasis on ease-of-use. They not only say their backup service is easy to use, it literally is easy to use. You simply install a small program on your computer, run the initial backup wizard, and then literally set and forget it. A word of caution: It can take days or even weeks for the initial backup depending how much data you have on your computer, but it all happens in the background without bogging down your computer or interfering with anything you're working on so it's not a big deal. There is one important thing to point out about Carbonite backup. Not every file type is automatically backed up. Documents, settings, photos, email, and music files are the default files that are automatically backed up. However, you cannot backup music files during the 15-day trial period. The files that aren't automatically backed up by default are: video files, program files and executables, and very large individual files (>4GB). However, these can easily be added to your daily backups by right-clicking those file types After the initial backup is completed, the Carbonite backup service will automatically backup your data everyday. You don't have to turn anything on nor do you have to remember to manually backup your files - except for those file types that aren't set to backup automatically as mentioned above. To see what has been backed up you just need to look for the dots. Each file on your computer is marked by a colored dot when you use Carbonite. Green dots mean the file has been backed up, yellow dots mean the file is awaiting backup, and no dot means you have selected not to have that file backed up. As with any online backup service, you want to be sure there is adequate customer support and that restoring your data files is as easy as backing them up. This is where Carbonite isn't perfect and frankly, needs some improvement. Granted, Carbonite gives you more access to support than most online backup services. They offer phone, live chat, and email support, but this isn't the problem. The problem is with the spotty response times and the quality of help you actually get when you have a problem. In the interest of full disclosure, I've been using Carbonite backup without any issues now for several months so I haven't had to use their customer support. However, after reading through several customer reviews of Carbonite, this is the one area where the company is lacking. Some say they get immediate and helpful support, while some say they never hear from them or that the information they are given isn't very helpful. In regards to restoring files, this is another area where apparently things can get dicey. I haven't had to restore any files yet (knock on wood) but I have restored a couple files just as a test and it was completely painless. According to PCMag and other customer reviews, however, restoring a large number of files or restoring files on a different operating system (XP to Vista) can be tricky and down right complicating. Bottom Line of Carbonite Backup Carbonite backup isn't perfect but no online backup service is right now. I don't use Carbonite as my sole source of backup. I personally wouldn't rely on any single method of backing up my files as it's just too risky. If I used Carbonite backup exclusively and found out later restoring files was indeed a pain, then what would I do? And if I relied exclusively on my external hard drives, what would I do if they crashed or were destroyed in a fire? For me, Carbonite backup is an incredibly affordable insurance policy. I still continue to do weekly backups to my external hard drives. By using both Carbonite backup and my external hard drives I get total protection. If my computer crashes, I can get get immediate access to my files via my external hard drive. And if my external hard drive crashes or gets destroyed in a fire, I'll still have all my data waiting for me at Carbonite. |
| Online Backup Service Specs | |
| Storage Capacity | Unlimited online backup |
| File Security | Files are encrypted on your computer using 448-bit Blowfish encryption and then uploaded to Carbonite through a secure 128-bit SSL tunnel, the industry standard for safe and secure data transfer. |
| Backup Process | Automatic or scheduled back up of your photos, music, email, and data files |
| File Restoration | Your encrypted files are stored on Carbonite's secured servers. To restore your files you simply double-click the Carbonite Backup Drive icon on your desktop and select "restore" to restore it to its original location or to a new location on your computer |
| Software | A small program installed on your computer works quietly in the background without slowing system performance |
| Compatibility | Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Mac |
| Pricing Information | |
| Current Promotion | 10% Off One Year Subscription; 5% Off Two Year Subscription |
| Price Details |
1 Year Subscription with 10% Discount: $46.71 (normally $54.95) 2 Year Subscription with 5% Discount: $94.95 (normally $99.95) 3 Year Subscription: $129.95 |
| Customer Support | |
| Telephone Support | Yes - Also offers priority support for $19.95/year |
| Live Chat | Yes - during business hours |
| Email Support | Yes |
| Company Information | |
| Company Background |
Carbonite was founded in 2005 but didn't launch the Carbonite online backup service until May 2006. They were the first to offer unlimited backup storage for an affordable flat-rate fee. David Friend was a co-founder of the company and is the company's current CEO. According to Carbonite, they have backed up and protected more than 2.5 billion files and have restored more than 160 million lost files for customers in over 100 countries. The company launched support of Mac computers for the first time in 2009. |
| Official Website |
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David:
Thanks for stopping by and leaving your comments about Carbonite. You are correct – you cannot backup a mapped drive or an external hard drive with Carbonite. I’m hoping they change the sometime soon as I backup to an external drive myself on a weekly basis.
TravisVS
Site Admin
I was recommended Carbonite by a friend of mine and after an evening setting up the free trial on my Mac I was quite happy with it until I discovered a flaw, and it’s not one that is obvious from looking at the website.
Your files need to be on your boot drive. If you keep your files on an external drive or a network drive Carbonite won’t let you select these drives for backing up.
I keep all of my photos, music and other important files on a NAS device which is mapped as a network drive on my Mac. I notice that Mozy doesn’t seem to have this limitation?
John:
Thanks for the details. Sorry to hear your experience with Carbonite’s backup wasn’t the greatest. I haven’t had to do an entire restore myself (knock on wood). I’ve only restored the occasional file or two. Your dilemma is exactly why I recommend EVERYONE backup their files locally to an external hard drive at least once a month – preferably once per week. Use Carbonite as strictly an insurance policy – an absolute worse case scenario. I never plan on relying on Carbonite’s restore process to be honest. I have over 150gb of data backed up right now. I couldn’t imagine how long that would take to restore! I will only resort to it if my external backup doesn’t work after my computer crashes.
TravisVS
Site Admin
have been a carbonite customer for 12 months and have had to perform two restores using this product due to Dell hardware problems and recent virus issue requiring o/s rebuild including disk format. I have no problem with the backup side of this product but the restore and support is poor at best. The files eventually get restored after several days but you have to watch the process like a hawk. Their restore status is not accurate and they recommend reading their lengthy log files. The process hangs “waiting for connection to carbonite backup server”. This requires carbonite to log on to your computer and reset their processes. In some cases they have to reinstall the software. THey do not handle Outlook file restores very well, a 500MB files took 24 hours on a DSL line and they were not saturating it. Support wait times were 10-15 minutes during the day and some of the support staff were rude, demanding that we restore the software each time and when you ask for a supervisor they magically fix the process. We are now looking at Mozy along with a local backup option for Outlook. Make sure you take the time to test not only the backup but the restore!
Carbonite looks good but failed when I really needed it.
I was not able to restore my files after a computer rebuild and got no response to my query
Yeah that makes sense , I will just let Carbonite do it’s thing just in case something goes wrong it will be nice to know that I can still get my stuff back even if it takes a while. I will also do what you said and back up my stuff on my external hard drive weekly. I just was not sure if it was taking so long because I was doing it wrong, I get it now. Thanks TravisVS for getting back to me so soon.
Take care
Jeff
Jeff:
It can take a long time to restore your files. That’s one of the drawbacks to any online backup service – it can take days to get your files restored, especially if you have a lot of files. I have never done a complete restore because I use Carbonite strictly as an insurance policy. In other words, I would only restore the files from it in the event I lost everything locally. I do weekly backups to my external hard drive. That way if I ever need a file (or all of my files), I can get to them instantly. Carbonite is just there in the event my computer crashes and my external hard drive crashes, gets destroyed, or gets stolen;)
I personally don’t advise people to rely 100% on any online backup service. I recommend weekly backups to an external hard drive and use these online services as more of a catastrophic backup. Restoring a file here and there from online backup services is usually pretty quick, but to do a full file restore can take a long time. I have over 150 GB of data backed up at Carbonite. I couldn’t imagine how many days it would take to restore!! It’s just nice to know my stuff is there “in case.”
TravisVS
Site Admin
Was trying to restore all my files to a reformatted hard drive and it was on 10 percent for four days before it went to 11 percent restored. Is it normal to take so long to get everything back? I gave up after a week and a half of it barely doing anything I ended up just using my external hard drive that I also back things up on. (This is a home computer).
Crummy service…don’t use it. Their servers are bogged down, couldn’t even access remotely….
Aaron:
Sorry to hear about your experience with Carbonite online backup. If you read this, it would be great if you left more details. I’ve never heard of this problem before. It shouldn’t just stop working. And what do you mean exactly when you say it stopped working?
TravisVS
Site Admin
Beware of Carbonite. A few days after my free trial ended it stopped working. If they’re backup stops working for you, good luck getting a refund.
Just written a review of Carbonite myself:
http://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2009/carbonite-offsite-backup-review-2/
I’m using it on a Mac. It takes a while to get the files up there but the user interface is good and all seems to be working well. There are quite a few exclusions about what you can upload though so many locations on your hard drive are excluded meaning you can’t use it to back up everything I would like to back up.
Odie:
Double-click the Carbonite paddle lock icon in your task bar to open up the Carbonite control panel. Click on “Set Options” shown on the left. Then click on the “Backup Schedule” tab. You’ll see there is an option to manually do backups by scheduling specifically when you want to do the backups.
One word of advice…I’m in the same boat as you – I HATE having programs running in the background but I was pleasantly surprised that Carbonite has NO affect on my system’s performance. I’ve been using it (in the background) for well over a year now and I have yet to have any issues.
TravisVS
Site Admin
I want full manual backup control and I normally keep as many background programs and services turned off. Is there any way to completely turn off the auto backup feature and stop the program from running in the background?
John:
Unfortunately, Carbonite will only backup files on your hard drive. It doesn’t support network drives – and there is no way to trick Carbonite into thinking a network drive is your hard drive either (I checked).
TravisVS
Site Admin
I’m thinking of buying/trying Carbonite: have a question. Can you set it to back up a network drive? The drive would always be available to the PC running Carbonite.
I have ShadowDirect running to back up to an external HD, but I can’t make it see the mapped network drive where most of my stuff is! So I do a brute force backup every week or so. Can Carbonite see a mapped drive?
Susan:
Good to hear Carbonite is working well for you! To answer your question, Carbonite keeps files on their servers for 30 days. So if you have “File A” on your computer and you delete it, you’ll have 30 days to recover it from Carbonite. After 30 days, Carbonite deletes it from their servers (unless of course you restore the file on your computer – then Carbonite will continue to keep a backup of it).
TravisVS
Site Admin
Sorry, forgot to add… I’ve been using Carbonite for about 10 months now and find that it does do its work silently in the background. Twice, I had to reinstall my files… once I dropped my laptop on concrete and a second after the service department restored my computer to factory settings. Worked perfectly!
What happens when I delete a bunch of programs and files? If Carbonite also deletes them, how long does it take? I just had my computer in the shop and my user profiles got all messed up. Hopefully they are corrected properly now, but I was worried the entire time about what Carbonite was writing in stone.
Just switched to BackupandShare.com. its good so far. Very easy to use with additional free windows mobile backup solution. no harm in trying this.
Wheat:
Thanks for the feedback! Glad to hear Carbonite is working out so smoothly on a Mac. I do agree with you that it is a pain to add those other files during the backup. That is one change I hope Carbonite makes in the near future. Keep us posted.
TravisVS
Site Admin
I’m trying out Carbonite on an iMac (OS X). I’m still performing my initial backup (still on the 15-day trial). I can’t speak to the restore process, as I haven’t tested that yet, and I don’t like having to manually add videos, apps, and other of the files that are excluded by default, but I can comment on system performance, which has been great. I’m really surprised that there’s been no noticeable lag at all.
Thanks…I enjoyed doing it.
As long as I am here again, I will report that everything seems to be working exactly as advertised. The Carbonite programs sits in the background keeping everything up to date with no noticeable impact on peformance or bandwidth. I have tried restoring my most complicated files and everything seemed fine. Of course the only wild card is whether or not the system held up in the event a full restore was needed but I don’t plan to test that!
If there should be some snafu in the future, I will post again but otherwise I give Carbonite a high rating and was just what I was looking for.
Steven:
Wow! Thank you so much for leaving all these posts! It goes a long way in helping others who might be considering an online backup service (whether it be Carbonite or some other provider). I’m glad to hear Carbonite is working well for you. It sounds like you are all set and ready to go.
I’m using an online backup provider for the same reasons you are – in case all my other backups fail. I don’t advise people to rely on one type of backup. My recommendation for the average home computer user is to backup weekly to an external hard drive and then run Carbonite or some other online backup service in the background.
Thanks again for taking the time to share your experience. I appreciate it.
TravisVS
Site Admin
5 hours later and everything is green with the exception of a file I am currently working on and a couple of files in the ICal and Calendar folders which probably are constantly changing.. Also, I restored a couple of my most complex directories to the desktop and compared with the original files and all seems well. So, I guess at this point I can say that everything is working as advertised…a nice initial experience as opposed to Mozy.
I should say that my purpose here is solely for a list ditch recovery in the event that all my normal back ups (Time Machine, Clone in my apartment and one off-side clone at a friends apartment nearby) were to fail. At that point, I wouldn’t care if it took 1 day or 5 to recover just as long as I got my files back.
So, unless there are new developments, this will be my last post on Carbonite and I assume I will be going ahead and selecting it as my online backup company of choice.
Sorry for all the postings.
Ok, I think I understand what is going on. The orange files all appear to be files I did in fact work on during the backup and which have changed. Thererefore, Carbonite has re-scheduled them for backup which should take place in 24 hours. I test restored several of these files and they do appear to have been backed up successfully.
So, tentatively I would rate this experience as a success but I will check in again after 24 hours but so far so good!
Ok…the backup just now finished and I would estimate that the 26gb took just under 3 days or about 8gb/day.
Conclusions:
1) The computer never slowed down
2) I was able to pause and restart with no problem
3) A few simple restore tests worked perfectly
3) 99.99% of my selected files were backed up (see below)
My only concern is that there about 20 files that are still orange indicating they have not yet been backed up. Most are unimportant but there are a couple of critical files which appear to be files that I worked on during the backup. This from the Carbonite Knowledge Base may have something to do with it:
“In addition, it is important to remember that Carbonite does not back up a new version of a file until 24 hours after the file’s last backup. That means that if you change a backed up file and go to work, the new version may not be immediately backed up. ”
So, I will wait 24 hours to see if the remainder of my files “go green” before I pronounce success. Also, at that time, I will do some more restore tests.
Its going very fast, something between 6-8 gigs/day which seems about double what I was lead to expect which, as I remember, was supposed to be something like 2-4gb/day.
I am seeing tops upload speeds of 135kb/s from my European location (I understand Carbonite only has servers in the U.S.)
Steven:
That’s great to hear! I look forward to getting your “full report” once you get everything backed up. I have over 70GB of data backed up with Carbonite myself and so far the system as been virtually flawless.
TravisVS
Site Admin
So far, I am 10 gigs into a 25 gig backup. So far so good and I have tried restoring a couple of files which was no problem. I also paused the backup several times and it resumed without a hiccup. I have noticed no impact whatsoever on my computer or INternet performance so far. The whole process so far just seems far more solid than Mozy did but I wait until it finishes before drawing a conclusions.
I will add that the interface (a preference pane) is more \Mac-like\ than Mozy although I would prefer the ability to mount a \virtual disk\ rather than the looking at the files in the pane.
Steven:
Sorry to hear about your experience with Mozy. I hope your experience with Carbonite backup is much better. Please let us know how it goes. I don’t get a lot of feedback from Mac users and I’m a PC user myself so it would be great to hear from a Mac user on how Carbonite online backup performs. Thanks!
TravisVS
Site Admin
I just finished a 20gb backup to Mozy (Mac), had to reinstall the program to get it to finish, and now the client restore doesn’t work. I would say my initial experience has been a catastrophe.
I am now testing Carbonite and so far so good but I need to do the whole set and then try a restore.
Guy:
Good to hear Carbonite got you squared away – even if you had a few bumps in the process. Thanks for sharing your experience;)
TravisVS
Site Admin
I also had a problem with Carbonite. My computer crashed and at that time, I was never more glad I signed up with Carbonite. I changed my mind a few days after that though cause restoring my files wasn’t a pleasant experience as not all files were retrieved at first. I had to call the support (and got a helpful rep to be fair) and then they advised me to try restoring again and this time I got all the files back. But I did have quite a scare there.
Mike:
Thanks for taking the time to share your experiences with Carbonite online backup. I wish you would have left more details. You paid for a year’s worth of backup and it never worked? Did you ever contact their customer support? And what specifically didn’t work when you say you never got a “proper backup?” An occasional glitch here and there as I experienced, is to be expected but to not have it work for an entire year seems odd. If you read this and you get a chance, please leave more details. Thanks!
TravisVS
Site Admin
I tried Carbonite for 12 months – never did get a proper backup uploaded – It would have been a good solution had it worked
Lance:
Good to hear you’ve been having success with Carbonite online backup. While it’s been working flawlessly for me for months, I actually had a “bad” experience with it a few weeks ago. I had saved a bunch of videos (a dozen videos – each about an hour in length) to my hard drive and I set Carbonite to back them up. It took a couple weeks to back them up because I usually shut my computer off at night when I go to bed. At any rate, it kept wanting to do the backup while I was using my computer and for the first time ever it was really bogging down my computer – to the point I had to disable the darn thing. I finally just kept my computer on 24/7 for a few days to complete the backup and everything was fine. I share this story to warn you that while Carbonite rocks, it’s not perfect. I still love it though and will continue to use it as it has performed beautifully otherwise.
As for your question about Macs…I’m not a Mac user so I cannot comment. I would assume it would work just as smoothly but I can’t say for sure. Maybe a Mac user can chime in here with their experience.
Thanks,
TravisVS
Site Admin
I’ve been using Carbonite Backup for over two years now and I totally agree with the pros you’ve highlighted here — it’s really very easy to use and does so without any disturbance in my own work whatsoever. But I’ve been thinking about getting a Mac and I just learned from your info above that Carbonite only supported Mac this year. Would you know if it performs as well as in the PC?