I Thought Carbonite Would Be A Great Idea

I have been worried about my computer lately since it has been doing some weird things, like stalling and freezing and taking a long time to do anything. I kept hearing about Carbonite and decided to try the 15 day free trial since  it would be a tragedy to lose all of our financial data, and Mr. A's business files.

Coincidentally right around the same time, AJ decided to try Mozy.

The biggest complaint I have so far is that Carbonite makes my computer even slower than it was before.  It decides to scan my hard drive even when I tell it not to, and that makes anything I do take twice as long. Seriously.

It took twelve days to backup my files, the total of which was 35GB.  That gave me two days left to decide if I want to pay for a yearly subscription.  I have unfortunately read some scary negative reviews on getting your files back after a crash, but I realize that people are more apt to complain about a product than sing its praises when they are happy with it.

I am going to go ahead and pay for the year subscription, and I hope it does the job.

I don't really like having my computer on 24 hours a day, seven days a week so I need to take the time to figure out how to program Carbonite to save when it's convenient for me.

I will also be asking my son for a report on how Mozy is working out for him.

Have you tried Carbonite or Mozy?

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11 thoughts on “I Thought Carbonite Would Be A Great Idea

  1. Does Carbonite back up every single file? I don’t know much about it but it would make me nervous to have all my files saved somewhere that I didn’t control. Maybe I’m just paranoid but in this age of identity theft you never know.

    Another option would be to buy an external hard drive and backup all of your important files there where you can retrieve them if you computer crashes. I have to talk to my buddy who is an IT guru about automating the process because if you have to do it manually you’ll often keep pushing it off and pushing it off.

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    Daragh Reply:

    Hi not too sure about Carbonite but I know Mozy plan to offer the capability to back up your data to the cloud and also to a local external drive/NAS. That way you have access to your data in the event of a dead system etc but also have your critical data stored in a secure location in the event of damage to your premises or theft.

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    Mrs. Accountability Reply:

    SMT: It only backs up the folders you tell it to. Actually my son is my IT guy and he has me set up with an external drive. I am sorry at doing backups though. I need to get one of those automating things.

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  2. Online backup services like Carbonite and Mozy are cool but shouldn’t be relied upon. As the previous commenter has suggested – I’d be inclined to use an external hard disk drive, backup all of your essential files to the HDD and then just backup files that are changed or created – as well as using Carbonite or Mozy. It may seem like a ‘belt and braces’ approach but you will be able to relax knowing that your valuable data is safe.

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  3. I have been using Carbonite for almost a year, and have had zero issues with it. Perhaps it is more efficient on the Mac side.

    To respond to the other reply to this post, Carbonite will only backup the files/folders that you choose to backup.

    I also have an external drive that I backup too, but that will only go so far if you have a house fire or theft. I like having the redundancy of an external drive AND Carbonite.

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  4. Carbonite works. I have a netbook and there is nothing to complain about of my system running slow because of Carbonite, which uses less than 10MB of the system memory.

    Also something about the uploading time equals the internet connection speed and upload. The faster your internet speed the faster you upload your data.

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  5. I don’t live the idea of an external backup. That makes your files fair game for someone to steal somewhere. We have several computers networked and dump most of the files we need on the “spare” computer. One thing to keep in mind most hard drives fail if they are being accessed a lot (you can see your light flashing). If your hard drive is being accessed a lot you need to figure out why.

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  6. I used Carbonite on my PC all through law school, as did classmates. I never needed to use the restore function, but a friend did, and while it was slow, it worked. Carbonite didn’t work on my Mac (something I blogged about last summer – and then got a response from the head of the corporation!), so I switched over to Backblaze. I’ve got an external hard drive that I use, but in case of theft or fire, I like having my files somewhere safe. Sure, I could just backup to an external and keep it at the office, but let’s be honest – how often would I actually do it.

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    Mrs. Accountability Reply:

    Megan, my son is my IT guy… he is going to get me set up with an external drive as well as the Carbonite. Like you though, will I be attentive enough to make sure that happens? Oh that I were a naturally organized person…

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