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05 Oct 2010
Carbonite offers unlimited online storage, secure encryption and a straightforward yet informative system for creating and maintaining backups with little input required from the user. For those who are concerned about forgetting to backup important documents, it’s an excellent way to take the hassle out of an essential but often frustrating task.
Pros:
Straightforward, automated backups; effective incremental upload system; unlimited storage; good value
Cons:
Initial or new backups can take some time
Price: £41.95 per year
Manufacturer: Carbonite
The importance of regular backups in an office environment cannot be overstated. However, just as vital is the need for backups to not only be secure so as to prevent sensitive business data getting in the wrong hands, but also hassle-free; backups that require a lot of user intervention tend to find their way to the bottom of to-do lists.
While there are a wide range of products and services to simplify data backups both locally and online, few offer the degree of automation and simplicity found with Carbonite.
With version 4, improvements include the ability to label individual machines on a corporate network with a unique ID, thereby allowing retrieval of data from an online drive to be quickly determined according to a specific user and avoiding the need to maintain rigid version labelling.
There’s also a “restore search” option to quickly identify the file or folder that needs to be retrieved without having to trawl through reams of data, while tweaks to the restore manager and main interface make for a more intuitive way to monitor backup status and progress.
The software itself is very easy to use, and once installed (be it with the default backup locations or a custom set), Carbonite starts uploading the selected files; the yearly subscription provides unlimited-capacity online storage.
All data is automatically secured using the Blowfish encryption algorithm, and though the initial backup can take some time – we averaged about 400MB per hour in our tests – the software is configured to prevent this potentially lengthy process from affecting either the speed of your internet connection and/or computer.
Windows XP/Vista/7 (32-bit and 64-bit), Internet connection, Intel Pentium 4 1GHz or equivalent processor, 512MB RAM, 40MB hard drive space
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Do you agree?
Time it takes to back up
Yes, Backing up takes forever. I am a photographer and I don't think that my back up will ever finish. So that is pretty useless for preserving data.
Posted by: John Strain 19 Jan 2012
They don't tell you about this bug!
There is a serious bug in the remote access facility (accessing your backed-up file from another machine). Any files with names containing special characters or trailing spaces cannot be retrieved. This is a known bug (see http://carbonite.custhelp.com/... but I only found out the hard way when I really needed a file that contained an ampersand. Why on earth haven't Carbonite fixed this, or at least informed their users of the position so they could do a bit of renaming for their most important files? It can't be very difficult to fix. Carbonite seem to have acted very amateurishly and it worries me that there may be other bugs that I don't find out about till they jump out and bite me!
Posted by: Richard Donovan 03 Aug 2011
Unlimited Storage or multiple PCs
Are they providing unlimited storage for Multiple PCs. I am using SOS Online Backup and back up data from unlimited PCs
Posted by: Randy 20 Jul 2011
Good value
I was so impressed with Carbonite that last year I took advantage of a special discounted offer to extend their services by 5 years on each computer I have. Most people misunderstand or do not appreciate that an offsite (online) backup service will take some time to backup 100GB of data, say. Most people I know who whinge haven't backed up their data for months or years - so what's the rush. It might take a week, but so what. After that you don't have to do anything! Carbonite is configured to back up any change on your computers files automatically. And yes you can select folders 'not for backup'. To speed the very first backup - you can deselect operating system related folders and concentrate Carbonite on data only. I think Carbonite does this anyway but double check. [Carbonite offers a free no-strings trial so there's no money to lose]. Surely it could be expected that if your initial backup is 500GB that there might be some slowing of the initial backup. But that is not a good reason to rubbish this product. After the first backup of all files is complete it will work like a dream come through! Carbonite has been great with saving versions of documents - which really is such a generous feature. I love it because on occasion I've needed to go back to previous versions. It's not perfect in storing every single version, but on average it's stored about 3 or 4 previous versions which is good enough for me. A few days ago this feature was very valuable, because some files on my hard drive became corrupted - and oh joy, Carbonite had saved non-corrupted versions!! And finally, I want be clear that I am not associated with Carbonite, and have nothing to gain by giving the above information - I simply like their product. That's all.
Posted by: Russell 02 Jan 2011
Carbonite Unlimited backup claim is misleading
I'm currently in the process of my initial backup of around 500gb of date. However at 200gb I noticed a serious drop in the rate at which my data was being backed up. After having checked my broadband and pc settings I finally discovered that Carbonite restrict upload speed after 200gb. In reality this means I am looking at around 18 MONTHS to complete my initial backup and that doesn't include any additional data I add to my pc. If you add more than sat 4gb per week (easily achieved if you are a keen photographer) you will never get all your files backed up. Add to that the appalling customer service I've had so far where they refuse to respond to this issue. I've had two evasive emails and no response from a senior rep that I was asked to contact.
Posted by: Tony good 12 Nov 2010