Interestingly I paid ~100.00 for the drive. I could have gotten a 250GB for well under 200.00! ..if only my system could realize it.

Carbonite is storing ~70GB for me (4.95/mo.) but I’m limited to my internal drives. I can’t backup my USB drives. Cést la vié.

Just went through and completed (incomplete) a restore. While comparing some restored folders I discovered BIG GAPS in file listings.

I knew one has to right click and select “back this up” to enable exe, dll and others to be backed up. What I didn’t know is how many file types are excluded. I list them all here but they have been listed on this post:
http://www.tomkirkham.com/node/109

You will learn that Carbonite’s exclusions will make it impractical for any user doing serious work who has multi gigabytes of data.

I learned it is impossible to inventory/compare thousands of files to insure one is not missing something important.

I discovered how SLOW explorer runs when accessing the Carbonite Backup Drive. Mine crashed three out of five attempts. I NEVER was able to view the recovery log. My system would not display it. 2.4GHZ w/2GB RAM.

BTW Ian, I trusted UploadingIT.com and they went belly-up. Those files are now gone forever.

It is my opinion that the online backup industry is in its infancy with lots of business models testing the waters. Consider Carbonites liberal definition of the term ‘unlimited’. http://www.nickstarr.com/2006/06/29/carbonite-when-unlimited-is-limited/

You’re forgetting one problem: typical DSL upload speed averages about 350kbps. If you have a 200GB hard drive on your PC full of songs, photos, movies, whatever, how do you propose to get that data online in the first place? At 350 kbps, it would take 3 months 7/24. Also, it’s one thing for Google or Yahoo to give you 5 GB of free space, but it’s quite another for them to give you 200GB. Not likely to happen when the most efficient disk storage costs about $1GB per year, fully loaded. And you’re assuming that Google or whoever is backing up all the data that they’re storing for you. I had 3GB of Yahoo mail vanish last year with no recourse. Just because it’s online doesn’t mean it’s any safer than it is on your PC. It will be many years before the Internet is so fast that you won’t need local storage. And the storage is getting cheaper at a faster rate than the bandwidth.

Dave Friend, CEO
Carbonite, Inc.

http://www.iseff.com/2007/09/stop-backing-up.html

Thanks again, and hope you keep reading!

Ian