Last month I subscribed to an online backup service called Carbonite. The way it works: you install a small program on your PC, it keeps track of changes to your file system (new, changed or deleted files) and uploads an encrypted copy of your hard-drive contents onto the Carbonite server. The program works quietly in the background, making regular backups which update changed or new files. Deleted files are only removed from the server after 30 days – so in the event you accidentally delete a file you have a period of grace available to restore it.
My first Carbonite restore occurred as a result of setting up my new notebook, I wanted to transfer all my files and settings over from my desktop machine. More than 29,000 files totalling over 4GB took about two days to restore, over my 1.5MB DSL connection.
Things didn’t go exactly as expected. I knew I’d have to manually install all my other software applications and programs but had hoped the restore would take care of system preferences and application settings as well as data files. I thought it would have my laptop running as a mirror image of my desktop machine, but the Carbonite program doesn’t work that way. I was also dismayed to see that my MYOB financial data files were not restored – which means these important files have not been included as part of Carbonite’s regular backups.
All it seems to do, that I could see, is restore files saved in the My Documents directory for each user profile. This is slightly annoying if you have obsolete profiles from your old PC that you don’t want to restore on the new one, you end up with all these extraneous user accounts – which seem to be assigned a secret password that you have to reset via the Control Panel before you can log into them.
I’m not sure how useful this program really is for me, it does not back up the files I really want although it does an admirable job with everything else! I like the fact that it tracks changes to your file system and offers a “second chance” to restore deleted files. In future I will make sure any important files (eg. MYOB data) are copied into My Documents so they make the backup, but shall probably not bother to renew my annual subscription when it next comes up.
UPDATE: Astonished and pleasantly surprised I was to find comments from Carbonite’s Dave Friend and Alison, addressing the issues I had with the system. Rueful I am that I didn’t “RTFM” but very impressed at the level of support and attention by Carbonite. I shall certainly examine the features they’ve mentioned and consider re-subscribing when the time comes.
Hi, I’m Carbonite’s CEO. You don’t need to copy everything into the Documents and Setting folder. If you have files or folders that are not in Documents and settings and you want to back them up, just right click on the file or folder and select Carbonite “back this up”. You can easily see what is backed up — the folder will have a green dot on it. Almost all Windows applications today store settings and data in the “Documents and Settings” folder, but some old apps do not. So you need to make sure you’ve added them to your backup. You can back up absolutely anything on your PC with Carbonite. You just need to select it if it’s outside Documents and Settings.
Regards,
Dave
Hi there. Alison from Carbonite here. Sorry to hear that your restore didn’t go as planned. By default, Carbonite backs up My Documents and Desktop. If files, such as your MYOB files, were not stored in these default locations, Carbonite may not have automatically backed them up. However, you can manually include or exclude any other files on your computer by selecting “Back this Up” or “Don’t Back this Up” from the Carbonite Menu.
You can also choose to restore only certain files, instead of an entire backup. This means you could have excluded the obsolete profiles from the restore (or removed them from your backup at any time), so that they didn’t end up on your new computer.
All of this information (as well as instructions to help you along) can be found in the FAQs in the Help section of our website. Also, if you’d like our customer support team to review your restore, they may be able to help ensure that you don’t experience the same issues in the future. We always like to hear feedback from our customers so we can improve our product for all users. Please don’t ever hesitate to contact them at customersupport at carbonite dot com.
I’m sorry to hear that your restore did not meet your expectations, but given this new info, I hope you will consider staying with Carbonite for your online backup needs.
Thanks,
Alison
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