Any Carbonite Users?? Online backup

[wrems]

I am thinking about buying Carbonite and wondering if anyone is using such a service and if you could share your experience/opinions. Obviously, this would just be for personal files and such...

[cncb]

I'm probably going to do it. I did the trial and it seemed pretty good and it seems reasonable for unlimited storage. One thing that kind of concerned me is that when I installed the trial it was already somehow linked to my email address (I never had to enter any password)? I am pretty paranoid about security especially with my personal files...

[wrems]

The reason I ask is that a friend of mine sent me a code for them usable until 12/31:

CUST50

1 year $28
2 years $50
3 years $65

I still have not done the trial and running out of time. Thinking about just pulling the trigger regardless. Maybe you can still get in on this offer?

[mistergq]

I have it running on my SBS at my office for the past 3 or 4 years. I have never had to reload the server so I have no idea how well it works to restore.

[TallMomof2]

I've been using it for a couple of years as my offsite backup and am quite pleased. It works quietly in the background. I've used it to restore files several times. Before I built my WHS server I had a HDD suddenly fail and would've lost a huge amount of data if it hadn't been for Carbonite. The restore worked painlessly.

[ace007]

I use it too but I'm switching to http://b6.crashplan.com/landing/index.html

Its a lot more flexible and the restores are much easier. If you ever have to restore a lot of data from Carbonite you better have lots of time. It worked but it is very slow.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by wrems

The reason I ask is that a friend of mine sent me a code for them usable until 12/31:

Wow, thanks for that! I got 3 years for only $10 more than I was going to pay for 1 year.

[Paul H]

You should read "Carbonite is HORRIBLE. BAD Company. DO NOT USE!!!!" and "Fatally flawed":
http://www.amazon.com/Carbonite-Inc-...ews/B000HX9K2E

DOES NOT BACKUP VIDEO FILES

[wrems]

Originally Posted by Paul H

You should read "Carbonite is HORRIBLE. BAD Company. DO NOT USE!!!!" and "Fatally flawed":
http://www.amazon.com/Carbonite-Inc-...ews/B000HX9K2E

DOES NOT BACKUP VIDEO FILES

Thanks for that! I forgot about all my home videos that get strewn into my photos... This is one area that I want the backup for photos videos and just docs.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by Paul H

DOES NOT BACKUP VIDEO FILES

Ugh! Now you tell me . I will try to get a refund since this will not be "automatic" for me (I have several home videos too).

[stanger89]

What about backblaze?

[wrems]

Originally Posted by stanger89

What about backblaze?

Is that a personal recommendation?

[stanger89]

Nope, a question. I was talking to a friend about how to house tons of storage at home and we discussed the backblaze config, and I just setup my granparents with online backup, they get 2GB free (not backblaze, not sure who actually), plus this thread prompted me to think about maybe setting it up myself.

I also get 2GB free with my ISP, but that's nowhere near enough for my digital photos. My ReadyNAS has a service as well, but it's only 5GB and more expensive than backblaze's unlimited at that.

So I was curious if anyone here had tried them, unlimited space for $5/mo or $50/yr doesn't seem bad.

[cncb]

Originally Posted by Paul H

DOES NOT BACKUP VIDEO FILES

I haven't confirmed this yet but it seems to not be as bad as I thought. According to support for videos you can turn on video backup by file type (extension) and it will backup all videos with the given extension no matter where they are located in your backup. Kind of a pain if you have a lot of video file types but not a big deal for me since my home videos are only 2 different types.

[korben_dallas]

Anybody using online backup? What's your daily/weekly upload size? How much you paying?

* merged *

[GKusnick]

Have you seen this thread?

[korben_dallas]

I understand their reasoning, but it's not a true historical backup.

The Backblaze service is designed to protect the files you care about. Thus, we will keep a remote backup of any file that exists on your computer. Just in case, Backblaze will even keep multiple versions of that file for up to 30 days. However, Backblaze is not designed as an additional storage system when you run out of space. So, please don’t try to upload your external hard drive to us and delete your data off your drive…or we will delete those files from our servers as well.

I wonder if they would give an option for longer archive times? One of my reasons for looking at online backup is that I may be on business trips for extended periods of time. Or if I move, I may be without my PC's for weeks or possibly over a month.

[taylormadearmy]

I have been using Carbonite for a couple of years - has been working painlessly, but have not needed to restore as yet so until that happens I guess I will not know how good or not it is.

However as I now am using Windows Home Server I wanted someething that works on that - Carbonite does not as it does not support Network drives. There are a few things out there that seem to support WHS natively as an add in, but they are then to be expensive (for around 100Gig storage which is what I need).

The best thing I could fine for WHS is iDrive - you need to install and maintain it via RDP - that seems to work pretty well so far - and is around $50 for 150Gig which seems reasonable. Again - I have not get needed to restore so do not know how good it will be in that situation...

Anyone else using online backup directly from their WHS if so what?

[mikejaner]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Nope, a question. I was talking to a friend about how to house tons of storage at home and we discussed the backblaze config, and I just setup my granparents with online backup, they get 2GB free (not backblaze, not sure who actually), plus this thread prompted me to think about maybe setting it up myself.

I also get 2GB free with my ISP, but that's nowhere near enough for my digital photos. My ReadyNAS has a service as well, but it's only 5GB and more expensive than backblaze's unlimited at that.

So I was curious if anyone here had tried them, unlimited space for $5/mo or $50/yr doesn't seem bad.

I tried it out for a few weeks. It backed up the folders I pointed it to, and all seemed well, until I read the fine print. They do not do many types of files, VM's, iTunes Podcasts, ISO's, EXE's and other random types of files. They also do not backup files larger than 4Gb, or network shares. This may not be a problem for some, but for me, I would like to back up all of my stuff, including most of those kinds of files, which exist on a Linux RAID array, ie. Network Drive.