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Carbonite 6 months later - new review

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Carbonite 6 months later - new review

Written by Marco Conti Sunday, 11 April 2010 18:25

Carbonite Online Backup

Last August I blogged about Carbonite, the Cloud Backup Service, and it turned out to be one of my most popular issues with over 30K hits in the space of a few days (and still going strong). At the time my review was less than stellar because I couldn't even install their software on any of my machines and their tech support could have handled the situation a bit better.

But I always intended to come back and give Carbonite another shake. I don't enjoy bashing products or companies unless they really go out of their way to be rude and unhelpful and after my previous article I have to say that the carbonite people handled themselves very well.

Today, a bit over 6 months later I have been using Carbonite for about 3 months and I am ready to write a new review, this time based on using the product. In the meantime I have had a major crash that took my computer offline for a week, a laptop meltdown and a remote access need for some of my files.

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How did Carbonite fare?

Quite well it turned out. Carbonite is, as far as I know, the most affordable online backup available. At least for those of us that have a lot of files to backup. If your needs are below 5 to 10 GB there are plenty of cheaper or even free solutions. For instance, Windows Live provides each user with 20GB of free storage with each account. Then there are Mozy, Idrive, Adrive, Dropbox and many more that have some sort of starter plan with a few free GB of backup space.

However, free backups may be fine for a few critical files, but if you are a web professional all your files are critical and these days the size of our files can be staggering. I have a few Illustrator files that can easily reach 500MB for a single project. Not to mention audio and video; my 10 Minute Joomla! Tips Video Podcast takes approximately 1.5GB per issue when I add up all the different files and takes.

When I calculated how much it would cost me to backup with any of the other services it was clear that Carbonite is the best deal around, at least for the moment, save maybe for Mozy Home, which is $4.95 a month for unlimited files (in their case I have no data in regard to "Fair Use" policies they may have).

Carbonite InfoCenter

When I updated to Windows 7 I was able to install the Carbonite software in 10 minutes. Obviously my machine was at fault in that instance. After installation Carbonite has been pretty much pain free. In fact, at first I decided to load it up to see if the "unlimited" part of their marketing pitch was really true.
Apparently it was.

I must have backed up close to 700GB and I kept it at that level for about 2 months. I never received any "cease and desist" or any other nasty email referring to "Fair Use" or such. That's very good because in my previous article that was exactly one of the "minuses" my research had unveiled.

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Eventually, I audited my files and decided to dial down a bit, keeping only the files I truly consider essential (which still must total close to 400GB). In that respect I have to give Carbonite credit where it's due.

The Big Crash

About a month ago I found out what a truly bad idea it is to have a triple boot computer without some sort of third party boot manager. My XP boot disk failed and suddenly I no longer could boot up to any of my partitions. Turns out that the windows boot manager defaults to the lowest common denominator (XP) and once that drive/partition is gone the machine won't boot up anymore. It took me a week to figure out the problem and fix it.

In the meantime, while I had local backups I could use (I keep all my documents in a separate internal hard drive), some important files I needed had been saved on my C drive and I had no access to those at all.

With Carbonite I was able to switch over to my Mac Mini, navigate the Remote File Access area of their site and download my files very quickly. It was a life saver.

When I tried to restore my files to another computer, however, I quickly found out Carbonite's limitations. My secondary machine is a wonderful little Mac. But while Carbonite support the Mac OS if you backup from it, it won't support restoration between platforms. If you have a PC and a Mac you have to decide which machine you want to use for your main backup and be prepared to forgo the full restore option in case of a crash.

I never had occasion to use a full PC to PC restore because even though one of my laptops has a full Terabyte of HD space (split into two Hard Drives) the space left was not enough to do a full restore. Frankly, I did not even try the restore because I had most of my files backed up locally on a USB drive anyway.

This cross-platform problem is one of the only two major negative points I can find in Carbonite. The other is that Carbonite won't back up from a USB external drive and, I suppose, from a NAS (a network Drive attached to the router via Ethernet).

If I had a wish list of features to make Carbonite the perfect backup solution it would be these two things.
I would even be willing to pay more for these features, if they were available.
Let's face it, $60 a year for unlimited backup is dirt cheap. I wouldn't mind paying even double that for a service that allowed me to back up and restore on different platforms and that let me use my backup drive as the back up source instead of my working drive.

In addition, if they let me backup from my external USB drive, my backup would take a lot less space on their servers because I backup my documents into archives every night. Instead, all I can backup at the moment is my raw files which also get backed up externally. (in a sense, that's better for me so that in case of emergency I can browse the files online)

Still, this time I give Carbonite a 4 out of 5 because their service is reliable, very easy to use, easy to manage and it really saved my butt the one time I needed it. If they fixed their cross platform and USB drives issues they would get a 5 out of 5 the next time around.

Backups are a key part of a professional arsenal. If you don't backup, someday you'll be sorry about it and you'll be willing to spend almost any amount to get your files back. Like in the web hosting business, in the online backup business you should not make a choice based on price alone. Carbonite is a solid company and their software is very easy to use (again, it was my computer's fault that it didn't install the first time around). I have to admit that I sleep a lot better since my files are backed up on Carbonite.

My only final gripe with Carbonite is that when I applied for a reseller account with them, I was turned down on the spot. Obviously something triggered their decision. It wasn't my previous article, since I applied before I wrote it, but I applied again today and I got another denial.
If any of the Carbonite guys stumble across this article, do me a favor, review my application and contact me. I would at least like to know why I was turned down.

I am not trying to get rich off my blog and I'd never let my affiliate deals influence my reviews, but it's still nice to earn a few dollars for referrals. I have seen truly shady web sites with the Carbonite affiliate banners and I don't understand why they'd refuse my application. OK, I am offended.

But regardless of that, if you have backup needs above and beyond the home user level, especially if you have a lot of client's files you need to keep safe, give Carbonite a look.

Carbonite is a Online Backup subscription Service
Rating: 4 out 5

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Carbonite won't back up I-works files...

I am nearing the end of my trial subscription to Carbonite and I find that my I-Works files (pages, numbers, etc.) are not backed up. The Carbonite help desk seems not to recognize the issue, but I'd just like a straight answer... If it can't handle those files, I wish they'd just say so and then I could make the decision... Do you happen to know the answer?

Mary , April 07, 2011

citizens can look forward

I wrote those articles quite some time ago. I don't remember the particulars anymore but I remember I have updated one of the articles saying that

cheap laptop battery , January 14, 2011

Carbonite does allow external backup

Hiya,
I have just read your two blogs about carbonite, very interesting.

I have been using carbonite for about 5 years and have not had any major issues with it, I like you have a load of files and was suprised to read in your last article that there was a limit. I think at the time the limit was if you had external drives etc plugged in and tried to trick carbonite, but I could be wrong. I think they cancel accounts that are abusing by using external devices to back up too.

I actually have it running on 3 machines at my house and it works great.

They are now offering a Pro version CarbonitePro (on its own website), which allows a lot of features, multiple users and computers on one account, central management, attached storage devices, unlimited space etc. But you pay monthly and you pay a lot!

My only gripe with it is that its been $50ish dollars for some time, as im based in the UK, they have now started charging me the same amount but in UK££, which means without the exchange rate its going to cost me a lot more, hopefully they will continue to bill me in USD or I will look elsewhere. Paying nearly £50 GBP for 3 machines instead of $50 will make a big difference to a home user like me smilies/sad.gif

Glad I found your site too !

Admin Comment:
Glad you found me too.
I wrote those articles quite some time ago. I don't remember the particulars anymore but I remember I have updated one of the articles saying that I have been using Carbonite and that I was reasonably pleased. If nothing else it's cheap.
As far as the limit, no it wasn't limited to users trying to backup external drives but users that were using more than average. However, one of their executives told me they no longer enforced it (but left it in the agreements)

Paul McCann , August 20, 2010