Sometime ago I restored my Carbonite backup. I was sure that it had backed up all my contents and, when restoring, I had a relly bad experience. The first thing I missed was my Photoshop Elements album that, for some reason, Carbonite decided not to back up. It has a bunch of rules to decide what files to back up or not, but that is simply stupid for cases like where you want all your "My Documents" backed up. You don't want to check that all files are being backed up, because if you have a service that has unlimited storage, it should do be able to do it. Or, it should warn the user that files were not being backed up.
Today I found out something else it didn't back up: all my .jar files. Yes, really. Opening my Java project in Eclipse makes me realize that my restored project has a wiped up WEB-INF/lib folder. Fortunately I had these jars on the server where the project is deployed, otherwise I would have to spend a long time finding these jars and restoring to their locations. Well, pretty much like I had to redo all my Photoshop Elements album.
Along with inability to back up removable storage, I am considering moving to another backup service when my subscription with Carbonite expires.
13 comments:
I agree, Carbonite needs to be more transparent about what it doesn't backup.
It says "unlimited" but then creates a complex set of rules behind that. Rules that are not made public and rules that are not changeable by the user.
I think that we'll be seeing more people get caught out by Carbonite.
Signed,
An Carbonite user annoyed that it won't backup my .MOV by default.
Oh, and the Carbonite server is currently down for maintenance (according to what's displayed on my PC).
Why does this need to happen every day?
Hi, I'm Carbonite's CEO. I think you guys are right. It's not clear what doesn't get backed up by default (except for movies, about which we are very clear). I'm surprised about the photoshop elements file, because that's not on our list of excluded files. I have .psa files on my computer and they did get backed up.
We're rethinking how we present all this for our next major release due out this summer. We also get some complaints from users that we're backing up stuff they consider to be junk. I think the solultion is to provide an interface that presents the choices clearly for those who care. Thanks for the feedback, and hope our next release makes this a lot clearer for technically sophisticated users like you.
Dave Friend, CEO
Carbonite, Inc.
Dave Friend here again. To anonymous, we've had one scheduled maintenance downtime (this past Sunday morning) in the last 14 months. It does not happen every day.
Dave
First, I have to say that I never actually noticed any downtime, not even this maintenance downtime (maybe because I didn't have anything new to back up). This kind of thing has never been an issue in my 6-month experience with Carbonite.
Second, I was really glad to receive your comment, Dave. Thanks for your time. It shows respect for the user, responsiveness, and that you are striving to make Carbonite a better product. Definitely you have no choice other than bringing the product to the market and then iron out all the issues, so some early adopters may suffer with some initial bugs - the inherent risk of being an early adopter.
One of my major issues with Carbonite, though, but I've never written about it is with application installation. It messes with permissions in the Config.Msi and many products fail to install for this reason. The first one - which made me look seriously for a solution after having bought the product and being unable to install - was Office 2007. Then I realized that a lot of other applications (like Adobe applicatinos) had the same problems installing that would go away if I disabled Carbonite before installing them. This is something reported in a few other blogs that you are probably aware of.
Rodrigo,
We're working on the config.msi issue right now. The problem is that Microsoft's installer utility doesn't like that Carbonite is peeking in that folder while it's doing its thing. In an upcoming release we'll exclude the folder from our scans. In the mean time, if you run into this problem often, disabling Carbonite when you need to run an installation is a viable workaround.
Would you mind sending a note to customersupport @ carbonite.com with "attn: Len" in the subject line? I have another idea I'd like to try but I'll need to send you a small file attachment.
Thanks,
Len Pallazola
Manager, Customer Service Systems
Carbonite, Inc.
www.carbonite.com
After contacting Carbonite 2 times...it has taken me 1 week and my problem is still not resolved. It takes 72 hours for them to respond to technical issues. I can't get the program installed getting error messages.
I'm giving them 24 hours, then asking for a refund.
After contacting Carbonite 2 times...it has taken me 1 week and my problem is still not resolved. It takes 72 hours for them to respond to technical issues. I can't get the program installed getting error messages.
I'm giving them 24 hours, then asking for a refund.
Dr. Leone, MD
Santa Monica, Calif.
After contacting Carbonite 2 times...it has taken me 1 week and my problem is still not resolved. It takes 72 hours for them to respond to technical issues. I can't get the program installed getting error messages.
I'm giving them 24 hours, then asking for a refund.
Dr. Leone, MD
Santa Monica, Calif.
After contacting Carbonite 2 times...it has taken me 1 week and my problem is still not resolved. It takes 72 hours for them to respond to technical issues. I can't get the program installed getting error messages.
I'm giving them 24 hours, then asking for a refund.
Dr. Leone, MD
Santa Monica, Calif.
I have also had a horrible experience with carbonite. I let one of the support people take over my machine earlier this week and they uninstalled carbonite. They had an issue reinstalling it and emailed me some directions to follow. The directions didn't work and another support person spent 4 hours taking over my machine today and still no answer. Then a series of "we sent it to engineering" "no just try this" chat sessions for the rest of the day with support and I still can't get my the files that I know are backed up that I desperately need. Also the website says support is open until 11PM est but it closes at 5:00est. I ran into "time to close" and we need to have your files looked at by engineering and I am still nowhere. If anyone has any ideas please let me know. You can only get your files back if carbonite is installed on your machine.
So it is three days later and I have spent the majority on the phone with Carbonite. I purchased the enhanced support .....
My computer now has my symantic protection completely wiped off. Carbonite was reinstalled. I spent 1 day installing 3 mail files - only to find out that Carbonite hadn't backed up my computer since July of 2008. The green carbonite icon on the bottom of the screen said everything was fine. I didn't get any email notifications that Carbonite had not been working for 6 months. And, the customer support person from Carbonite just hung up on me saying she needed to discontinue this conversation. And, they will not refund my subscription which is in place until 10/2008.
Needless to say, I would not reconned this program to anyone.
I used to recommend Carbonite to everyone, it's saved me lots of times, including last night when I accidentally overwrote an important file, I simply restored it from Carbonite.
BUT... not including mov or mpg files in the new update is unacceptable. It needs to be fixed right away. Movies of my niece's Christening and first Christmas haven't been backed up. Carbonite may be very cheap, but I couldn't sleep at night if I worked for them and they had a policy of not backing up such important files for people.
I appreciate David being on here, but don't you feel guilty about this?
After reading through other problem posts I've just manually gone through all my folders searching for a "donut" mark which shows that not all the files are backed up in a folder. But it also shows a donut if you have an empty subfolder. So it's going to take me ages to go through everything.
Plus now I've manually told it to upload all my movies I've now got gigs waiting to be backed up, just when I'm away on a bad net connection.
This is not on Carbonite. You had the best product around, but just deciding to not backup certain files introduces too much uncertainty and lack of trust. You really need to fix this as the biggest thing you sell is not backup, it's peace of mind.
That's what we want back.
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