I’ve been using Carbonite for a couple years and it is probably the greatest program anyone could ever put on their computer. It runs all the time, but doesn’t make your computer run slow at all. Whenever you add or edit a file, Carbonite will automatically back it up online. It uploads files anytime that you aren’t busy using your computer or your internet connection. The end result is that you always have an up to date backup stored remotely.
What inspired this post however is the miraculous restoration of all the data on my stolen laptop. What normally would have been a catastrophic loss turned into nothing major. Normally I would be dead if my computer was stolen and all my files were lost, but I was able to boot up my other computer and immediately download all my files from my stolen laptop. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to open up the backup and see that everything I needed was still there.
For only $5 a month, it’s one of the most worthwhile expenses I have. Just think of all the times that you have lost a single document, whether it was a school paper or a business presentation that you accidentally deleted hours before you needed it. Now think about how much you would have paid to get that one single file back. Multiply that number times 100 or more and you’ll know how great it felt to get all my files back. I can’t recommend Carbonite enough.
(Disclaimer: I signed up as a Carbonite affiliate before posting this, but I was going to make this post anyway)
Derek,
Thanks for the kind words. Please send me an e-mail when you get a chance; I’d like to hear a bit more about your story.
Sincerely,
Len Pallazola
Manager, Customer Service Systems
Carbonite, Inc.
You said: “I was able to boot up my other computer and immediately download all my files from my stolen laptop”
Really? Most people claim about the slowness of uploading and downloading files to and from Carbonite.
In fact, Carbonite servers have been “down for maintenance” for almost 24 hours now.
Hardly reliable!
Derek: Hi, I’m Carbonite’s CEO. Glad to hear you had a good experience with your restore. Please send your email to Len.
To the anonymous poster who asked about downloads, a typical DSL downloads 6-8x faster than it uploads. Most of our users are seeing about 1.6-2.0 mbps downloads. So you can download 1GB in a little over an hour. If you leave your new PC running, usually everything is restored by the next morning.
In any event, it’s not Carbonite that governs the speed, it’s the speed of your internet connection. With regard to downtime, Carbonite servers were down for 4 hours 23 minutes as scheduled. This was announced well in advance and to our knowledge did not inconvenience anyone.
Regards,
Dave Friend CEO, Carbonite, Inc.
I’ve downloaded over 12 GB over the past two days from my Carbonite backup. It’s not maxing out my internet connection, but I’m still happy that it’s downloading.
The only issue I’ve had with restoring is that every time that I reboot my computer, it loses all information about what it was restoring, including wiping the recovery log. I have to go in, see what I actually downloaded and then select the rest of the files to download again.
Other than those minor issues though, I’m still more than happy with my service, especially at the rock bottom prices they are at. As for down time, I have been using Carbonite for 2 years I believe, and I haven’t ever had issues with it, so I’m happy with the reliability.
I’ve read on Wikipedia about remote backup and I tried some services, but the only one I bought is Memopal.
Memopal offers a search engine online that helps me find archived documents in few seconds. Some Competitors have a search engine too but it’s very slow and usually it is not online.
Memopal is online storage, online backup and file sharing services into one product.
Memopal saves all versions of my documents. Moreover I have two computers, desktop ad laptop, and I can install Memopal on both buying only one license. It’s great!
http://www.memopal.com