Carbonite

Would not recommend. The list of downloaded pages is very difficult to navigate. There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason in how the files are listed. If you know the name of the file you are OK, because you can do a search. It may have downloaded all the necessary files. It is hard to tell. The worse is when I did not renew, I am being harassed to renew. A flashing notice comes up and can't be deleted because it does not stand still long enough. It has been several days and I am still getting the very annoying and intrusive notices. For this reason alone I would not get Carbonite back-up again.

My subscription expired Aug. 1. I was given no warning in advance that it was going to expire. At some point in the day I got a msg saying it was expired but they'd give me a little grace period to renew. (I forget actual wording). Then a few hours later, a msg saying it had expired and I had to renew for my data to be backed up. It would not be backed up until I renewed. So I renewed at night 8/1.

I thought after I paid the renewal, my subscription would be automatically extended. No, you need to re-install their software. Which didn't work. I get an error msg saying "renewal is incomplete." I look on their database about how to solve the situation, but neither of the 2 entries are relevant to my situation.

Not only is it not backing up, the custom designation I gave for which files to back up and which not to appears to be lost so I'll have to redo all that, probably.

So I wait till 8/3 morning and call them. The tech supporter I get, not impressed with her. I explain the situation and she says oh, you got an error msg saying such and such. She didn't ASK if I got that error msg., she SAID I did when I hadn't.

She gets into my machine remotely, spends maybe 45 minutes reinstalling and trying to get it to work. Not successful. She says call back in 30 - 60 minutes when server should be up.

I wait 90 minutes, call back, not only am I told server is still down, this time I'm told wait till tomorrow morning! The server is supposedly down for scheduled maintenance, both of them tell me that, but one things it'll be up in 30 - 60 minutes while the other says wait 18 hours?!

Why is resubscribing such a hassle? Why do I need to re-install? Why is a server for "continuous backup" down such a long time for "scheduled maintenance" and why don't the support people know how long it will be down?

They spend too much resources and attn on advertising and not enough on their so-called "continuous backup."

I just went through the free trial of Carbonite to see if it was any good compared to my current online backup service, Mozy. Online storage and online backup solutions have come a long way over the past few years and there are a lot of new players in the field. So when Mozy decided to up their prices, I started looking for a new alternative.

The interface for the Carbonite product is pretty neat -- it's very simple and it puts a little icon on each folder or file to tell whether it is backed up, waiting to be backed up, or not set to be backed up. I also like their scheduling options, which lets you set as many scheduling rules as you want. Lastly, this is one of the few online backup services that still supports unlimited storage.

What I don't like about Carbonite is the fact that it will not back up certain types of files. Who are they to tell me which files can and can not be backed up? If I want to back up some random system file on my computer, why can't I? In my opinion, an online backup solution should as closely mimic using an external hard drive as possible, but just be more secure. Otherwise, what's the point and why should I spend so much more money? (You can get a terabyte of external storage for roughly the same price as one year of online storage.)

Another issue is that for the free trial, it does not automatically back up your music files. So I will have to repeat the same days-long tortuous process once I actually sign up for the service. Finally the deal breaker -- in order for Carbonite to back up video files, you have to manually select them one by one. Are you kidding me? I have a ton of tiny video files spread across a bunch of different folders, and that would take me hours. I guess I'll keep looking for another service...