Comments on: I Thought Carbonite Would Be A Great Idea

By: Mrs. Accountability

Mrs. Accountability — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 16:12:28 +0000

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…

By: Megan

Megan — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:01:25 +0000

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.

By: Mrs. Accountability

Mrs. Accountability — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 03:20:05 +0000

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.

By: Daddy Paul

Daddy Paul — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:50:35 +0000

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.

By: Daragh

Daragh — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:02:08 +0000

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.

By: JP

JP — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 05:51:30 +0000

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.

By: Mozy Fan

Mozy Fan — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:14:50 +0000

I’m using Mozy to backup my external drive for 2nd backup which is big advantage over Carbonite.

By: Jake

Jake — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:20:56 +0000

Egnyte is another option worth taking a look at. It have better features then mozy and carbonite.

By: pidgeon92

pidgeon92 — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:39:08 +0000

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.

By: Bathrooms

Bathrooms — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:53:57 +0000

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.