Carbonite Online Backup Review Discussion

In the Star Wars universe, carbonite was the only acceptable medium for keeping Han Solo safely and indefinitely preserved, so naming an online backup service Carbonite is a bold statement of (geek-centric) quality. Is this data retention solution worthy of Boba Fett's seal of approval, or is this just another case of dark side branding treachery? We seek out the truth in this review.

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I will never trust a random startup company sitting at the other end of the world with other laws and all, and country borders and political stress between and all that, holding my backup for me, and believe, that i can get it back anytime, then.. what about 10 years from now? 20? anything can happen during that time that can not matter to me personally, but make the access to that backup impossible.

and, having said that, i run over to my home server, and hug it best backup system ever.


but nice review anyways, and thanks for showing alternatives.

 

How long would you consider a company to be a startup? Carbonite has been around for 3 years now.

 

as long as the only thing i get from them is some backup on some proprietary environment and all?

or actually, as long as the first time i read about them is here on nbr, today?

It's at least no big company where you've heard since years about it, how much it good high quality products they delivered before, and how they have proven they really know longterm storage, and all that can be that complicated about it. a company 3 years old should save your data for maybe 30 years? unlikely.. nearly no computer company is that old..

and besides relying on some unknown company in some foreign land, i have to rely on their isp, my ips, the network between the isps, their hw, my hw to connect to the isp..

with my home server, i have nothing of those to care. only about my hw. and i know for sure, where my data is, and what gets done with it.

 

I've heard of them before, but then again, I live in the US, where they're based. They're partnered with a lot of major companies at present providing backup services, from laptop to cable systems, to LaCie. I'm not sure that figuring on a 20 or 30 year storage date is realistic, considering that you yourself on your own home server will probably be changing hardware long before that point as well. There's also the question of how relevant 20 or 30 year old data would be, but that's largely dependent on exactly what kind of data we're talking about.

Your points are valid as well, but in my opinion, services like these are more for small businesses than individual consumers, because those are the types of customers that would be more vulnerable to significant data loss in the case of an on-site issue, such as a break-in, theft, or fire, which would more than likely affect any home backup system or server as well.

 

The general metric I subscribe to is how much downtime can you tolerate. If there's a disaster scenario and your entire computer dies, can you afford to wait hours and hours for your data to be prepared and downloaded, or do you need to back up right now? Personally, with my internet connection the most I can download is around 1GB/hour (uploading around 1/5th that) so if I have hundreds of gigabytes of information to backup, it's going to take forever to redownload - will the online service overnight a hard drive of my data to me? And if so, do I have to pay more for that service?

 

you know how small businesses can do very cheap save and trustable backup? the it guy takes the 1tb external disk that gets the backups copied to each week at the friday to it's home and put it into it's save.

this is for free actually, and more trustable than anything else.

rule nr. 1 as a small company: don't give your data out of your hands. never.

 

So you don't trust startups? Then who do you trust? Like Amazon S3?

netcpd is a pretty good one you can back up to S3, very easy and intuitive. try it. Amazon should be there for a long time.

http://www.netcdp.com

 

no, but i don't trust arbitary companies to host and backup all my data. in general. but some random startup is even less trustable than allready known and for other stuff trustable companies (like i trust amazon when i buy something).

but in general, no personal data stored on the cloud that i could one day have to rely on. never. it's idiotic bull.

 

That sounds a little over paranoid to me.

 

Carbonite has had a national advertising blitz on television here in the USA for over the last two weeks.

 

What about the small companies that don't have IT departments, or run businesses out of their home? This might be more of a cultural thing, as I have no idea what things are like in Switzerland, but in the US, there are no small number of businesses being run out of a home, or small locally owned stores or franchises that don't have the finances or payroll for more than half a dozen people or less. These sorts of businesses wouldn't have an IT guy, and anyone they have to service their computers would be just as likely to take their data as this company would (in theory).

Also, for some reason, your average American doesn't seem to commonly have a safe, although I'm not sure why.

Certainly, for the tech-savvy, making your own backups and giving them to someone you trust who is also tech-savvy to store for you is an excellent option. The problem is that this may not always be cost effective or possible for some.

 

making your own backups and taking them home is nothing techsavy at all. and every company having computers has some form of it-guy. setting this backup up is about as complicated as storing on some external disk and taking it home.


and this is not about paranoya, it simply makes no sence to outsource your whole company. wait a while, till cheaper companies from "the big east" will show you cheaper backup solutions. do you move over to them, then? no? why? because you maybe have no trust in them.

outsourcing and cloudsourcing the it is only one thing: lazy and cheap. but you sell your soul for it (or your companies) by relying on someone else. it's like those that buyed into google apps. well, google apps where down once for about a day. that means you can essentially close your whole company that day.

all that this is is the "easy" way, and a way of being able to point with the finger to someone else if there is a problem. but the problem with pointing the finger to someone else in case of emergency is, you have to rely on them. on someone you never met before.



or differently: would you as american host all your backups here in switzerland? maybe your money, but your private data? your customer information? everything?

as i said, no. as this is definitely the wrong way. a small business can get a windows home server for around 500$ or less, can backup up to 10 systems and store all your data (terabytes) save, available over gigabit lan. it allows for regular backup to an external disk that you can take home with you. and there is nothing complicated about that. anyone who was able to get a pc up and running and connected to the internet is capable of doing that.

and the result: you're on your own. and you know what? that is a GOOD thing.

lazy outsourcing is what kills the economy. shifting off responsibility.


this is not about paranoya, this is about logic. just use your brains and think "what GAINS do i get from this?" easy? well, you have to set up software, register an account, buy some software actually, too. and then you have to run the actual backup. is it really less, is it really more simple? answer, no. so, what other gains stay? none.

 

For the first point, unfortunately, that is often not true. As a personal example, I work at a motel (about 6-7 total employees) and while we have computers, we don't have any form of IT personel (I could maybe do the work, but since I wouldn't be paid for it, I haven't been offering). If there's an issue beyond simple rebooting or restarting a program (for example, the wireless networking going down), the company solution is to call an external contractor and have them come and fix the problem the next day.

Or, as another possible example, would a McDonald's franchise have a full-time paid IT employee? I would doubt it, but I could easily be wrong, seeing as I've never worked at one myself.

These are the kind of small businesses where a "simple" $50 a year online backup plan to keep their receipts and sales backed up would be a lot cheaper than paying the salary of an otherwise largely unused IT employee plus the hardware required.


As to a hypothetical (or possibly not) Swiss company, assuming I was going to use this sort of backup system (which, for the record, I'm not, although I can see it's uses for other people), then yes, if a company from Switzerland offered comparable features at a cheaper price, and already had a few years of good service as Carbonite has had, then yes, I would have no qualms about using them. Admittedly, I'd probably be encrypting any sensitive data on my end before doing so, but I'd do that with any sort of online service I would use, regardless of nationality.

As for the server, for some businesses, $500 for a backup server system is more than they have a budget for. $50 a year they can handle, but ten times that for a server + maintenance is more than they want to pay, and, quite frankly, may be much more than they need, if they only need to backup a few gigs or 10s of gigs of data.

Also, believe it or not, there are many people who own/run businesses who _cannot_ setup a computer and connect it to the internet, or at least, choose to pay someone else to do it for them. There is a reason why home installation of many appliances in the US is a very popular service.

Really, the issue is more about company resources and needs than paranoia. The issues at hand are more about what type of data you're storing, how much of it, and whether or not it'd be cheaper to buy your own storage system and maintain it or pay someone else to do it for you (whether through an online service, or paying someone to come in and make backups for you). For the seamstress or artist or fancy candle-maker working alone out of their home, the $50 for a relatively simple backup plan may be much more attractive than the couple hundred they'd need for a more comprehensive self-served server that they may need to hire someone to come in and maintain anyway.

Logically, the bean-counters think this way. "All I'm doing is backing up records that hopefully will never need to be used or referred to again, but the law says I need to make sure I maintain backups for the past 5 years. Now, I can either spend $50 a year on this online storage system for stuff that I should never have to use unless something crazy drastic happens, or I can shell out $300 to setup some server system that will do the same thing, and then pay a guy a salary or contract to maintain it, again for stuff that I should hopefully never have to even touch again... hmmm..." Note, by the way, that this person that gets hired is just as likely to quit, sell off your information, or pretty much do anything you worry about happening to your data via an online service as well, only you're probably paying more for him/her.

 

you know, just because the motel has some external support doesn't mean it has no support?

and McDonald has it support, just not locally at the store. remote desktop ftw.

and in both those cases, the it support should care for backups. all the motel owner should have to know is that their support does backup. how they do it is up to them, and that support company should have the backups with them.


if you have no it in your local company, then you get it from somewhere else. and from THERE, you should be able to get your backup, as you trust them, as you know they run to you as needed anyways.


don't make it too complicated, really.

 

You see, that's the thing. I'm pretty sure the people that we currently call don't do backups. They're just technicians, and while they might setup a system for us if we paid for the parts they'd have to order, they have no facilities themselves for that kind of storage. I'm also not sure the owner would actually trust them in terms of backups, as he's complained about their level of work before. He's fine with using them for repair work, as that's easy to make sure is done tolerably well (or you just make them come back out again) but for something long-term like data storage, I'm not sure he's willing to take the leap. In point of fact, we actually don't have an electronic backup solution: everything is done on hardcopy (paper) and filed.

 

still. i successfully deployed a winhomeserver to some clients. small businesses and such. teaching them how to use it was easy. supportcases, maybe once each 3-6 months. and the cost for them?
in one case 95$ for the licence, and they wanted 1tb redundant storage so they had to get a second 1tb hdd. rest was installation and setup, and teaching.. all in all, half a day work.

and they have all their data in their hands. and some tiny portable usb disk for taking the data home, putting it somewhere save (doesn't have to be a save).

and, they got one thing: full control. they only have to rely on me if they have some hw or sw support case they don't know how to handle. and that was the same before. so for about 200$ and some old hw they had lying around, they got a great solution that works, and is in their control.

i know different customers have different needs. but i like to know my customers, and my partners, and all personally. that's why i hate webbased cloudthings built up in a different country.

imagine carbonite going bankrupt. and i am here in switzerland, and have lost all my backups. do you think will have any chance to get to my data? or sue them? or what ever? i'm lost, completely.


i do like webbased solutions as a fallback once the own one fails. what if the company burns down? the home server will burn with it. the external backup won't. the webbackup won't, even if an earth quake happens here, as the external one is around the world. for that, it's okay. but for relying on it, it isn't.

backup is in that case a bit of an issue, as it's normally not needed anyways, compared to say, a webapp, that is offline suddenly. but still, backup is very important, and always underestimated. so if one actually does it, he should do it well. and i don't see such companies doing it well, compared to other options.

 

Ok, sounds like maybe we just had a miscommunication here. It sounded a lot to me like you were condeming all forms of online backup as useless and unneccesary, and that there was no point to a company like this one. If all you're really saying is that this should be integrated as part of a more comprehensive backup solution, then I have no substantial argument against that, apart from the grounds of some businesses not being able to support the cost of a "proper" backup solution, in which case a backup like this one would be better than none at all.

As for a company like Carbonite going bankrupt, I'd expect that if they did, you'd get a notification, probably telling you that your data would be available for the next month or so to download, and that after that it would no longer be available. With the reported size of the company and its expenditures and financing, I doubt such a company would just vanish overnight.

And I know that while I started this whole thing as more of a small business issue, from reading over various things I've come across while looking up information about Carbonite, it seems that there are a lot more individual consumers that worry about losing their personal photos and music and such than I would have thought. I guess I may be somewhat old-fashioned and out of touch in that I don't commit much that I'm worried about losing to electronic format only...

 

while all your stuff is true, it would still mean to rely on some foreign external company where there is no need for it.

and there is a difference to rely on some foreign company to do some service, and to rely on some foreign company to trust in your company private data.

and 500$ is nothing, even for a small company. only my own home server did cost a bit more, the rest is below that. and that is a constant price, unlike those services.

nowadays everything runs to "system as a service", outsourcing, etc. this is the wrong way, and it will fail. but as everyone sees the money gains in it, nobody wants to open it's eyes. until the next big "enron", this time of some company like sap (not they, i guess.. then again, why not? ) and suddenly everyone sits there completely lost.

i don't like outsourcing, never will. i prefer doing it yourself. yes, it's your own problem, then, but if you know what you do, you know what you have.