Carbonite Online Backup Review

Carbonite Online Backup Review – Facts, Company Profile, Product Description, Benefits, Drawbacks, Customer Comments, and Personal Review

 

Facts & Company Profile

Carbonite is an online computer backup company that offers online computer backups to homes and businesses.  The company itself was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.  The company has a customer support center in Lewiston, NE, and has two data centers in Boston and Somerville, MA.  The company has over 200+ employees and services customers in over 100 different companies.  The CEO and Co-founder of the company is David Friend.

 

***Although Carbonite is an adequate service, I would instead recommend that customers take a look at our reviews for two other services.  To learn more about them, click on the following links: SugarSync Online Backup or Mozy Online Backup.***
Product Description

Carbonite online backup allows customers the ability to protect their computer files.  This can include actual files and folders, photos, email, music, settings, and video.

Carbonite offers customers a number of great features.  Here, we take a look at several of them:

Set It And Forget It Service.  This feature allows you to setup the backup software once and then it will run automatically in the future.

Ability To Access Files From Anywhere.  Their service allows you to be able to get files from any computer with an internet connection.  This can even include iphones and other pdas.

Backup External Hard Drive.  This allows you to be able to also backup any files you have on an external hard drive that are not on the computer.  These files can be added to all the other files you are backing up.

Mirror Image Backup.  This feature enables you to have a disk imaging backup made.  In this way, you are protected against a crash of your hard drive as the software will make a copy of your OS files to an external hard drive.

The software works for Windows computers that run XP, Vista, and Windows 7.  Only the Home plan works with Mac Computers that use OS X 10.5, 10.6 or 10.7.

 

Pricing for Carbonite Home Plans

Carbonite offers three different plans: Home, HomePlus, and HomePremier.  Each plan has a step up of options in each plan.  The prices for each service are $59, $99 and $149.  The HomePlus and HomePremier have two additional services over the Home plan: external hard drive backup and mirror image backup.  The HomePremier plan include a Courier recovery service where they will ship you the backup.  In addition, you get an automatic video backup rather than the manual video backup that is available with the other two plans.

***Although Carbonite is an adequate service, I would instead recommend that customers take a look at our reviews for two other services.  To learn more about them, click on the following links: SugarSync Online Backup or Mozy Online Backup.***

Benefits of Carbonite

  • Easy to use and setup.
  • Provides protection against computer theft or loss, fire, floods, etc.
  • Can provide an added layer of protection beyond local backups.
  • Recognized company in developing niche.
  • No limit to backup storage space.


Drawbacks of Carbonite

  • Online software can have more errors in regular backups.
  • Some continued oversight of software is needed, cannot simply set and forget.
  • Some extra manual steps must be taken to handle email over 4GB.
  • Backup External Hard Drive and Mirror Image Backup Not Available For Macs or on regular Home plan.
  • Inability to access previous backups made.  Only access to most current backup available.

 

Comparison Criteria

1.    Does the service work on multiple computers?

No, the service works where you get one subscription per computer.  Therefore, you would have to pay for a full second subscription to get it to work on 2 computers and have to buy three subscriptions to get it to work on 3 computers.

 2.    Does the service have the ability to synchronize files between multiple computers?

No, the service does not have the ability to synchronize between multiple computers.  If you do have multiple subscriptions, you can access them all online, but there is no ability to synchronize files between these computers.

3.    Does the service provide you with access to past editions?

No, you only have access to the most current edition.  There is no way access past backup editions.  Only the most recent backup is available to you to be able to pull files from.

4.    Does the service have the ability to backup specific files first or separately?

Sort of.  You do not have the ability to directly choose certain files to be backed or not backed up with the first run.  However, you can later manually go in and pick which files you want backed up or to not be backed up.  It is not an easy process to choose files as you must manually pick each file.

 5.    What level of encryption does the service provide?

They have the basic level of encryption as they offer 128 bit AES encryption.  This is the standard level of encryption for the industry but nothing more.

6.    Can it support a Mac or PC?  What mobile devices can it support?

 Carbonite’s home plan will work on PC computers that use Windows 7, Vista and XP.  It can also work on Intel based Macs that use OS X 10.5, 10.6 or 10.7.  The HomePlus and HomePremier plans only work on PC computers that use Windows 7, Vista and XP.

Carbonite does support a number of different mobile devices.  It has apps that can be downloaded and used on the following: iPhone®, iPad® and iPod touch®, BlackBerry® smartphone, and Android™.  This is helpful as you can more readily access a file that may be on your home computer and you are at work or elsewhere.

 

Personal Review

Setting up Carbonite is pretty easy to do.  It is pretty much push button to get it to do the first backup.  This part of the Set and Forget aspect is accurate.  However, I have found that the forget aspect is a lot harder to come by.  In my backup runs, I found that the program would often come back with errors causing me have to give it far more attention that I would like.  The ease with which to set it up is negated when you take into account all the extra time needed to fix the errors for it to run properly.  In my experience it was more like set and forget, be reminded of errors, set again, and then forget again only to find more errors and have to set it again, and so on.

I also had the opportunity to test out its restore capabilities.  On an individual file level, it is pretty easy to access your files as you can go online and download them from any computer with an internet connection.  However, a full restore is another story.  My initial attempt to get a full restore was thwarted as I was ultimately able to get all the folders restored but their respective files were not included in this process.  The process itself took 8 hours.  I was able to complete the process properly a second time although the process took over 2 days to complete.

Therefore, I do not feel comfortable recommending this service as a top choice to customers.

***I would instead recommend that customers take a look at our reviews for two other services.  To learn more about them, click on the following links: SugarSync Online Backup or Mozy Online Backup.***