Talk > Rants, Raves, and Praise > [Rant] Carbonite: Backup is not unlimited as they claim

[Rant] Carbonite: Backup is not unlimited as they claim

How much were you backing up?

reply to jaa
I am using Mozy free, let me know how you like it.

reply to removed
Slowed down to 1gb per day when it reached about 250gb.

2gb I could live with - it would keep up. But 1gb it does not.

I am trying Mozyhome on a different computer. Interested to see the difference in speed when the backup gets large. Unfortunately, it is going to take a while.

Backup content is 99% digital photos and photoshop files.
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NOTHING justifies terrorism. We don't negotiate with terrorists. Those that support terrorists are terrorists.

reply to jaa
I have used both Carbonite and MOZY. I had Carbonite for 2+ years, worked as advertised, had over 450 gigs backed up no problem, always maxed out my connection. However, problem came from their client, which is a buggy piece of shit.

Switched to mozy, managed to re-back up all 450 gigs in 2 months using my Sprint EVDO Cellular (I get awesome speeds on my data card!).

Real problem with Carbonite is, when you select to backup "Everything" it in fact, does NOT backup everything. Such as video files, files over a certain gig size and what not, which will then need to be done manually.
With MOZY, when I told it to backup EVERYTHING, it DID BACKUP EVERYTHING!

I am now a happy MOZY Customer. I am now pushing over 1tb of backed up data.

Only problem I have now, is if I need to restore my data, you get 30 days to restore your data before it is removed from their servers, and my present internet connection, that is not possible
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»KmanScooters.com Home of Wisconsin's Most Affordable Cars, Motorcycles and Scooters

reply to jaa
I wonder if the two are compatible - can both the Carbonite and Mozy client run on the same computer?

That would double the backup speed - split the folders between the two.

Seem sort of silly to be doing all this workaround stuff - would be a lot simpler if they would charge double and double the backup speed.
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NOTHING justifies terrorism. We don't negotiate with terrorists. Those that support terrorists are terrorists.

reply to jaa
You mis-understand. I do not need to keep re-uploading. It will stay on their servers indefinatly as long as the files still exist on the pc that the backups were purchased for, however, if my computer crashes, and I need to restore, once the original files are gone, the client gives 30 days to restore before the files that are not restored/exist on the backed up computer are removed. At least thats how I understand it. It may be though, that If I put the client program in restore mode, those files will continue to exist until restore is done, but If I were to delete files from my pc thats being backed up, they will be removed from their servers after 30 days.
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»KmanScooters.com Home of Wisconsin's Most Affordable Cars, Motorcycles and Scooters

reply to jaa
es and no. What you delete will be removed after 30 days. So it will still be backed up for 30 days.

If a file gets removed, it does not effect the other files on your backup. Only the one that was removed.
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»KmanScooters.com Home of Wisconsin's Most Affordable Cars, Motorcycles and Scooters

reply to jaa
Wow, 250gb of photos. That's impressive. I'm conscious of the amount of stuff I back up since I use JungleDisk to Amazon S3 and pay for the amount of data I transfer plus the storage space used. I back up all of my photos, purchased music files, and documents to online storage. For me that adds up to about 10gb. Anything else is backed up locally to an external hard disk with either TrueImage or Synctoy, depending on the content I'm backing up.

So in the worst case scenario where my house burns down or I'm robbed, I have my most vital irreplaceable or costly to replace files, but the less important stuff will be lost.

reply to jaa
I use Mozy, pay version. Seems to work well, except that on occasion (every few backup runs), the client freezes the computer and I have to reboot. Then Mozy auto runs again and it works. I've tried a few fixes listed on the website, such as reinstalling. It works for a while, then starts doing it again. I'm only backing up a little over 4GB at this point.

reply to jaa
Synology Cubestation CS407e (or newest version).... It holds up to four SATA drives as RAID0, 1, 5 or JBOD. I personally use two RAID1 volumes. VOL1 (320g) is for digital pictures and VOL2 (1T) is for music, movies and software.

- If hurricane comes (I live in Florida) I send one HD with my family when they head to higher ground.

- Two to three times a year I burn a DVD of all my pics and mail to my dad's.

- Uses a standard file system. If the box bricks you can plug any of the drives into a standard Windows machine and it'll be readable.

- Also acts as the following servers: FTP, HTTP, iTunes, camera and more.

TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR JUNK

reply to jaa
I got in a heated chat session with Carbonite support when I discovered the same thing. I was uploading about 5GB/day for the first 50GB or so and then was throttled back significantly after that. They completely denied throttling, which I am sure is false. The fact that their support people lie about it is amazing. My data backup needs are around 100GB, so I am able to make due with their limitations. If I shoot some photos and come back from vacation with 5-10 gigs of pictures, it eventually gets backed up in a week or so. Even though I find their claim of "unlimited" to be a bit shady, they work out for my needs.

Lately I have become concerned more about their software than their throttling. I recommended the product to a client and immediately got a call that they thought Carbonite was significantly slowing their computer. The person is out of town, so I will spend more time looking at it when I see them again. Then yesterday, someone else who just installed it claimed the same thing. Fortunately I had done a little research and knew more about it. Carbonite puts a heavy load on your CPU while it is backing up, even in low priority mode. The load is so high, that on my Core2 Duo E6600, I would see both CPUs spike to somewhere between 50-70% about 1/3 of the time. You would see 50% usage for 5-10 seconds then a drop for 10-20 seconds then another spike over and over again. Basically during backup I have found the CPU is running at 50% load or more 1/3 of the time. As soon as the backup stops, the load goes away.

Now whenever I use my computer, I pause my backups the number of hours I think I will be working on the computer. That is a pain. I wish I could just schedule backups to occur during specific hours or I just wish the product wasn't that CPU intensive. If you limit your backup hours, their throttling really puts a kink in your backup armor. I had stopped recommending the product except for people with very light backup needs (well under 50GB, which is most people). Having received the second complaint in the same number of weeks about computer slowdowns, I've stopped recommending the product altogether.

If the software were stable and they didn't throttle, I would say 55 bucks a years for 100 gigs or more of backup capability is a steal. In the end you get what you pay for.

reply to jaa
I would assume the CPU load is compression and/or encryption going on (hopefully in that order ).

They also do some pretty cool stuff with only updating file changes. For instance: if you have a 3GB PST file that needs backing up, they only send the part that has changed. This keeps backup times to minimum. I assume that takes some pretty heavy work to figure out on a file by file basis.

reply to jaa
Carbonite tech support continues to deny throttling. Carbonite is limping along at 1gb per day.
Mozy is backing up 15gb per day.

Here is the Carbonite log from my computer. While I'm no expert on Carbonite logs, it seems pretty clear they are throttling. You would think a tech support person would be embarrased to look at that and tell the customer to defrag their hard disk. The last line I pulled from the log leaves little doubt of the problem.

1251044787 @ Backup progress: file speeds last minute All: 102 Kbps, Unique: 102 Kbps, Compressed: 100 Kbps

1251044787 @ Backup progress: completed 10%, file counts last 1 15:00:08 All: 310 (627M bytes) Unique: 310 (627M bytes), Compressed: 1694M bytes.

1251044787 @ Backup progress: remaining 6 days, file counts All: 56904 (370G bytes), Pending: 476 (5966M bytes).

1251044787 @ Backup progress: task seconds last minute, Active: 60 (100%) Response Waiting: 0 (0%) Send Waiting: 2 (3%) Sending: 10 (17%) Delayed: 25 (42%), server delay 42%

1251044787 @ Backup hourly progress: throughput per-minute counts in Kbps [> 109008, 109008-54504, 54504-27252, 40, 39-20, 19-1, 40, 39-20, 19-1, 40, 39-20, 19-1, 40, 39-20, 19-1, 1] [0, 0, 0, 60]

1251044787 @ Backup hourly progress: minutes LowPri: 0, Reset: 1. Average files count: 0, average files size: 63 Kbytes

1251044787 Backup progress: low throughput due to server delays.

It is obvious the company is stretched financially, but you (and I) have data backup needs that go well beyond that of the average user. If you read the Carbonite TOS, you will see a clause that allows them to cancel you if they feel your data backup needs are excessive. This got them so much bad press, that they probably just use throttling to get excessive users so frustrated, they leave and don't come back. This way, they don't have to issue a refund. They really don't want you as a customer. It is just another example in this crazy world where the word "unlimited" means nothing close to that in reality.

Keep in mind Carbonite also had one incident where they lost a number of customer's data. There is no backup of your backup, or at least then that was the case. They use large RAID arrays and ended up suing (I think it was Promise tech.) for a RAID failure that caused them to lose a fair number of customers data. This only effected those who had hard drive failures while they were down, but I assume a much larger number had to re-upload their backups. Their claim if I recollect correctly was that they lost .2% of their customers data. These are people who had hard drive failures, since .2% is the number of hard drives that will fail in any given week. I find the fact that they consider a RAID array to be adequate enough to protect their customer's data a bit disturbing.

I have no issue with throttling or cancelling users.

What I dislike is the lies.

So far, Mozy is true to their word and has no trouble maxing out my 2gb connection.
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NOTHING justifies terrorism. We don't negotiate with terrorists. Those that support terrorists are terrorists.

I agree. I wish they would just be honest and tell you what you are paying for, so you can make an educated decision as to whether or not you want to do business with them.