My Carbonite Online Backup thoughts

So, I'm on about my 2nd week of having the Carbonite online backup service. The concept of the service is great. Backup your important files over the Internet to their servers. Your files are now protected from being lost due to flood, fire, hard disk crashes, etc.

That being said, I'm a bit disappointed in what I'm now discovering. During my initial backup I was seeing upload speeds of around 350KB/sec which is the max that my Comcast connection can muster on the upload side. I got an email from Carbonite congratulating me that my initial backup was complete. In reality it wasn't complete, but because I only back up certain files and I didn't back anything up for a couple of days it assumed I was done. My upload speed has now dropped to a consistent 100KB/sec. I am now trying to backup several gigs of files and it is taking quite a while. After reading their FAQ I found out that once you hit the 35Gb mark it will throttle you back to 512kbps, once you reach the 200GB mark they will again throttle back your upload speed to only 100kbps. If you don't feel like doing the math that roughly translates to twice the speed of dial up, or a bit slower than my AT&T cell phone can download on EDGE. You can read it for yourself here http://carbonite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1440/kw/speed

I'm REALLY hoping, this is just a misprint. I can understand the need to balance bandwidth between customers but 100kbps makes it almost useless.

The second annoyance is that Carbonite will only backup your files while you are idle at the computer. Not moving the mouse or typing. Since I use my PC quite a bit it takes even longer to backup my files.

I was going to sign up for the 3 year plan since it was a better discount but I decided to only go for the 1 year plan. Kind of glad I did as another company may come along and offer something better. For now this will do but a 100kbps upload limit will never keep up with my file changes on a daily basis.

EDIT: I'm now on day 40 with Carbonite and about a week ago I started receiving emails from Carbonite saying that their list of files did not match what my client software had. I had to reinstall the software. Hopefully, that fixes the problem. if I lose anything I'll be super pissed.

Please ensure that your files are protected.

Dear ******,

We've noticed that in the past week, the files you have been backing up on your computer ****** do not match our records. In order to keep your backup up-to-date, please follow the steps below.

These steps will only take a few minutes and you won't need to restart your computer.

1. Is Carbonite paused or disabled?
If your Carbonite lock icon looks like one pictured here, you wil need to right-click on the lock icon and uncheck "Paused" or "Disable Carbonite". This will ensure your backup is up to date. images of Carbonite Lock in the systems tray
If Carbonite is not paused or disabled, you must complete steps two and three.
2. Uninstall Carbonite
To uninstall Carbonite on a computer running Windows XP, click the Windows Start menu and select Control Panel.

In the Control Panel, click Add or Remove Programs to display a list of programs installed on your computer. Select Carbonite and click on the Remove button. Windows XP Control Panel Add or Remove Programs screenshot
For instructions on uninstalling Carbonite from a computer running Windows Vista or Windows 7, please visit our Knowledge Base.

3. Reinstall Carbonite

To reinstall Carbonite, simply click on the button below and log in to your account.

Reinstall Carbonite Now
Please be aware that until your backup is completely refreshed, we may not have an accurate copy of every one of your files. In the meantime, if you’re concerned about particular files, please make a temporary copy of them on a flash drive or external drive.

After you’ve reinstalled Carbonite, you’ll know that your backup is up-to-date when the backup progress indicator on the Carbonite InfoCenter reads 100%. (To open the InfoCenter, just click on the Carbonite lock icon in your system tray.)

If you have any questions, please contact customer support.

Sincerely,

The Carbonite Team