I’ve been excited about the Carbonite online backup system ever since I first read about it on TechCrunch. Why? Because it’s 5$ a month for unlimited storage capacity, using a silent tool that is always running to insure that new and changed files are backed up automatically. In the past I’ve been good at doing manual backups to DVD ROM, but recently I’ve been a bit lax with it. Since I’m a contractor who works at home, backups are a must-have to keep my career from being ruined by a data-loss. Having automatic backup is really the optimal solution. After using Carbonite’s 15 day free trial, I decided to purchase a year’s subscription to it.

There’s good things about Carbonite, and some bad things, but I’ll walk you through my experience.

How Carbonite Works

Carbonite installs a tool on your computer that manages the backup process. It will only back up folders and files that you instruct it to. It’s always running and backing up your files in the background, while you work. Files are encrypted before leaving your computer. Carbonite claims this won’t slow down any operations on your PC or net traffic because it watches net activity and PC usage and tries hard to not get in the way, “trickling” the back up to their servers. That said, Carbonite seems slow. The initial backup of my My Documents folder (all 19 gigs of it) took twelve days of me leaving the computer on 24/7 connected to Comcast High-Speed. However this slowness doesn’t bother me, because it was all done in the background.

Once the inital backup is done, Carbonite backs up new files that get created, and files that change. It waits 10 minutes before it starts backing up new files, to make sure you’re actually done “touching” them. Files that are deleted from your PC are kept in Carbonite’s archives for 30 days before being deleted, giving you a month to restore accidental deletions. Overall I like this backup philosophy, but there’s some problems and limitations to it that make Carbonite less valuable than it might seem at first glance. I’ll discuss these problems at the end of this review. It’s upload rate on my system seems to be over a gig a day, which is fast enough for the work I do, but may not be fast enough if you do video editing or you’re an MP3 monger.

Setting up

Carbonite gets an A+ for simplicity. It was so easy that I can’t remember exactly how I set it up, but I did. Here’s a recap from what I can remember. I signed up for their free trial, and got an account. I then downloaded and installed their tool, which requires Windows XP or above. I then watched a tutorial on their website, and that was it. I now had Carbonite running and backing up my My Documents folder. It’s pretty easy. I did run into one snag though -- the tutorial and installer talked about being able to choose what folders to back up later on by right-clicking on files, but the menu options they talked about weren’t there. I fixed it simply by rebooting; it’s possible their installer asked me to reboot but I don’t remember.

The UI

Carbonite displays a little dot on the icons of files that are backed up. A green dot means it’s backed up, and a yellow dot means it’s scheduled to be backed up soon. There’s some other colored dots too, but they’re not important. Here’s a screenshot of some of my files. Notice the little green dot on them:

If the file is missing a dot, then it’s not scheduled to be backed up at all. But that’s easy to change. Right-clicking on a file or folder displays Carbonite options:

I really love this aspect of Carbonite, because it provides instant accessibility of it’s options -- I don’t need to go into another menu or program to back stuff up or to see what’s backed up and what’s not. It’s backup status is shown directly on the file, and changing options is done right there. The dots instantly tell me what’s backed up and what’s not, again directly from Windows without having to go to a menu or a website. This makes all the difference in the world in making sure I get the most out of Carbonite.

The website contains some flash-based tutorials that are pretty easy to follow. They’re a bit cartoony and odd, featuring a Ludwig Von Drake type character who walks you through the basics. It’s a good attempt from Carbonite at trying to be friendly, but it also is a bit too silly for a company that’s supposed to be saving your important files from disaster. Still, using voice and animation really makes learning how it works easy.

Carbonite puts a little icon in your System Tray, that when clicked on brings up their Info Center UI. It’s a simple tool that lets you check the status of your backup (percent completed, total size, etc) and also provides some help and promotions. It’s cool, but the design and layout of it is a bit amateurish ( I could do better ), but it gets the job done. Here’s a shrunk down screen shot of it:

Restoring Files

Carbonite wouldn’t be much good if you couldn’t actually restore backed up files. Luckily, it is super easy. Carbonite installs a virtual drive on My Computer that provides access to files backed up on the Carbonite servers. Here’s a snapshot of that:

The virtual drive displays backed up files and folders via a file explorer, including very clear status information about while files are backed up, and which ones aren’t. Files that have been deleted from the PC but backed up are also clearly marked.

I tested Carbonite by deleting files from my computer, then going into the Carbonite virtual drive and restoring them from the UI. It was very clear which files were missing, and it was easy to restore them via a right-click. Carbonite restored them silently and displayed a little message when it was done restoring. Overall it was very easy.

Limitations

Carbonite is really easy to use, and it’s super affordable, but it has some limitations that users of it should be aware of.

First off, is that it does not yet support file versioning, and only the most recent of a file is stored. This leaves you vulnerable to user error, like unknowingly overwriting an existing file with a new one, or one of the most heinous Photoshop offenses one can commit: flattening then saving a PSD, overwriting the layered one. Yes, there’s a short window (10 minutes) where you can recover from accidental overwrites using Carbonite, but if you don’t catch your mistake in time, Carbonite will back up the changed file, and then it’s too late.

Perhaps even worse, file corruption via a virus or bad hard drive could cause Carbonite to back up damaged files, getting rid of the good versions stored on Carbonite. I don’t know whether or not a semi-failing hard drive (a drive that causes corruption of some files while still continuing to work) would make Carbonite think that files were changed, but if it did Carbonite would back those damaged files up and you’d lose the good versions.

Another small limitation is Carbonite does not back up files that are “open” by applications, so if you work on big files and have them open in an application for days on end (like I do sometimes) that file is not going to be backed up, even if you save it often.

According to their website, Carbonite will be adding versioning and locked file support, but there’s no details or timeline for this upgrade, so don’t hold your breath.

Summary

I was seriously on the fence about signing up for Carbonite because of it’s limitations. But in the end, it’s simplicity and it’s stellar price made it an option that I simply couldn’t pass up. Other back up tools that have versioning simply cost way too much to back up the amount of data I have (up to 70 bucks a month), and having to watch how much I back up a month simply is not an option for me; I need it to be automatic. Plus my normal procedure for editing important files includes manual versioning (saving files with “001” , “002” at the end as I change them), and Carbonite will back those files up.

While not perfect, I believe that Carbonite will indeed save me from a lot of otherwise career-crippling data-loss scenarios, like total hard drive failure, theft, fire, power surges, certain viruses, and more. And to have that extra security for just $5 a month, I simply can’t afford not to use it. Check them out at Carbonite.com

What do you think of Carbonite? Leave a comment!

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