Carbonite Online Backup review

Good backup with few flaws

Have been with Carbonite for past two years and when it worked well, it worked really well. On occasion, the backup crashed, eg unable to backup files with abnormally long filenames. Then you realise the side-effect: the software was so simplified that it was opaque to troubleshoot. The most recent client software seems to be significantly improved. However, the error logs are just as absent.

The single feature that kept me with Carbonite is the unlimited backup size. No fair use clause. Apparently, a few customers have over 1 TB of data backed up!

Recently, I restored almost a hundred thousand files and there were less than ten files that were unable to be restored.

So my experience is: you will have a very good backup experience with Carbonite - unless you need to troubleshoot. Hopefully, this will be addressed in the next software iteration.

By mnj_lim on 17 Aug 2010

Reasonable but slows machine

I've just dropped carbonite as I found it slowed the PC down too much. A remarkable difference with it completely removed. I now run backips to a desktop drive at close down each night. Quicker, and all under my control.

By mandarin44 on 18 Aug 2010

Good features but don't all work

I went through the trial version of Carbonite, but some of the features important to me just didn't work. The scheduler was ignored (I didn't want it backing up during working hours), and if you rebooted it would not automatically restart backups (it would start up but "paused").

In fact, the only time it would, without my manual intervention, start backing up, was when I had told the scheduler NOT to work!

I paid for the Mozy service instead!

By Jules on 18 Aug 2010

Works if you follow their rules

So that means that partitions have to be NTFS or FAT on Windows or a couple of Mac formats (and not FAT, although the Mac will read/write that) on Macs. This particularly affects people who dual-boot, including to Linux.

I went to Diino, whose Java-based client works on all three platforms, and also lets you run it on multiple machines for the same price.

By iwatters on 21 Aug 2010

Alternative to Carbonite (Timeline Cloud)

I have tried Carbonite for a short while and it was really complicated the backup process took a long time, especially with Outlook Files you can’t locate them, and you have to manually go deep in the system to select them!!!Imagine the time that will take. I did extensive research tell recently I came into Timeline Cloud, they backup to Amazon S3 which is safer plus they have cloud disaster recovery which makes me feel safer all under high level of encryption. Definitely recommend checking them out. You can check them here: http://www.timelinecloud.com/

By RonaldH on 12 Jul 2011

gotta have local backup as well

Like many I'm moving away from Mozy as the price has shot up.

Mozy 2 had a great feature where it backed up to a local (usb) drive as well as online, so if you suffer a sizeable data loss the recovery doesn't take forever. Crashplan does this, and also does initial seeding (or recovery) on a loan drive (for a price). USD49/yr unlimited. (I'll write again if it doesn't work out)

By shimself on 2 Jan 2012