I am personally not a big fan of Mozy, mainly due too their privacy statement that essentially entitles them to share my user information and backed up content with whom ever they see fit.
http://mozy.com/privacy
check under disclosures, I actually showed this to a lawyer friend of mine and he was shocked. Now I don't know if this is a European paranoia thing but it's worth noting I think.

Also because there are alternatives that offer better privacy protection especially for European users. KeepIt is an example of a company that offers the exact same (unlimited bacup) without violating my european statutory rights.
https://www.keepit.com/privacypolicy

If you are a corporate user or have the money to burn I personal favorite is rsync. (use it at work to backup super important mobile units)
http://rsync.net

Unfortunately KeepIt is till working on their mac software, so until then I am stuck with a subfolder on my companies servers, at the grace of our IT department.

Personally, if I ever get online backup of some sort, I will be using Mosso CloudFiles for the service it provides. Again, unlimited storage space that expands as you need it. You only get charged for what is used also (15 cents a Gig right now), so it automatically starts off cheaper than Mozy.

I've already used it for my first free month and I loved how well it worked. With Cyberduck I can backup many files and folders at once with no problem, and the CDN allows me to also link to those files or folders if I want to share them with someone (or take loads off of my website).

Mozy is cool though, I've used it with some success in the past and have considered going back.

Thanks for this article. I've always wondered what 'Unlimited Storage' meant, so it was good to read that you have clarified this. I think I'll give Mozy a try for a few months and see how I get on.

Hi, David. I’d appreciate it if you would send me the blog where you read that Carbonite has a 100GB limit. I would like to set the writer straight. We have users with over a terabyte backed up, and thousands of customers who are backing up more than 100GB. There is no limit, and never has been.

I keep asking writers, and I will ask you, to check such facts with us before publishing them because once these rumors get started, they just have a life of their own, as you can see from your own experience. People have also said that Mozy is limited, but we have tested Mozy and I can assure you that they do not any limit either.

Another thing I'd ask is if you are going to review backup services, test the restore process. This is where Carbonite really stands out. Restores are fast, accurate, and there are wizards to help you if you're migrating to a different operating system (e.g., XP to Vista). No need for shipping DVDs or hard drives through the mail.

Dave Friend, CEO
Carbonite, Inc.

David,

I'm currently testing out Carbonite. I've used Mozy as well as iDrive. The only reason I tested iDrive was because they seemed to have more support for OS X, which they in fact do. The only hitch with them is they go up to 100GB's for a comparable price to Mozy and if you'd like more, well it cost more.

Mozy was nice and I was able to get up around 80GB with them, before the uploads started to run really slow and the application started to consume massive amounts of resources. The biggest decision to switch was when I found out that my wife's computer said it was backed up, but when trying to restore some files, they weren't actually there. This could have been a user error on my end, but I don't think that was the case.

Carbonite has been the best thus far. The application seems to run good, I however wish it would index faster than it does. It has currently been indexing my system for over a month now, I have a little over 9 million files totaling close to 2TB. Currently I have 63GB uploaded in the month that I've used them, but things seemed to have slowed down. I think this is due to Carbonite still trying to mull through all of my files and get an index before it finishes uploading. I tested the system with a small portion of my files, 70GB worth and then added more when I saw how well it was doing. Maybe I should cut that back and step it out.

I am also running Carbonite on my wife's iMac and it seems to be doing well. I have had it throttled since it was installed 3 weeks ago and there are roughly 30GB worth of files uploaded, with another 40GB to go. Her computer is very important to my wife and myself, simply because all of our family pictures and videos are stored on hers.

Once I can get all of my files backed up, or at least try. I will be posting an in depth entry on my personal blog about my experiences and the total files that were upload, as well as size and times. I'm also planning on setting up a test and seeing how well the application actually restores files. I keep triple local backups, so I will be deleting around 50GB worth of files and having them restored. I want to make sure that Carbonite can handle it and how fast it is, so I can plan for it in the future if it is ever needed. If it can't restore 50GB, I don't think it will be able to handle 2TB.

Hope my experience's help someone in need.

Regards,
Mike Bowden
Sinco Technologies, LLC.

Is there also a unlimited backup available for externals media like DVD, CD or my removeable drives.
As far as I know mozy only offers the ability to backup media whcih stay attached to your computer which is in my opinion useless.

I would like to store my taken footage on a save place without the need of keeping my drives attached to my notebook :|

I use Skydrive from Live.com it has 25GB of space for free.

But, Mozy.com seems good if you have a lot of Data.

The main problem I see with using online backup is my ISP warning me that I am using too much of their bandwidth uploading all my files.

Mozy will allow you to back up external and network drives IE NAS which carbonite won't allow. So carbonite is limited to what is on the internal hard drive of your computer

I was just about to sign up for Carbonite, I am glad I found this site!

Carbonite doesn't allow external or NAS backups!?! That is a deal breaker for me.

I am concerned about my privacy and security with an online back up service. Will my personal information be compromised and/or shared with others? What about my security and passwords. Is there a danger of spyware entering into my system?

@Mark, I fail to see where Mozy's privacy policy is a concern:

"
Legal Requirements

Decho does not disclose Personal Data, including the data you back up with the Service, unless disclosure is necessary to comply with an enforceable government request such as a warrant.
"

Sounds ok to me.

I can't get mozy to back up network drives either. When I tried a year ago they said that you can back up an external drive always attached to your computer but as soon as you detach it it will be erased from the backup.

So how did you get mozy to back up a Network drive?? I it really can I'll stay with mozy, otherwise I think I'll try carbonite.

At some point, Carbonite started backing up my external hard drives. Since I'd read that they were going to add that service later, I wasn't surprised. What did surprise me was when the data backed up to those external drives suddenly disappeared from my backup. I contacted support who informed me that they've never backed up external drives. Well, they must have had a bug, because I had over 500 GB from external drives backed up.

For those of you who'd like to try something else, some people report success by creating a mount point for external drives as subdirectories on their internal drives. Carbonite thinks they're just subdirectories, so the contents are merrily backed up.

While I can't currently see a limit to Carbonite's backup, it does seem to get throttled at some point. I've just installed an IP logger so I can view traffic going across the pipe. Yesterday afternoon I had about 300MB backed up. This morning, there was no traffic at all from Carbonite even though I have 235GB pending. I did get it to go again by pausing it and unpausing. I will also note that Carbonite has been working on the same file, which has a size of about 1.7 GB. Yes, it's a large file. I point this out to note that Carbonite's halting has nothing to do with searching for more files or indexing.

One final comment for those watching Carbonite progress updates. The units used in the status screen start out with MB, then switch to GB, then to TB. Each time the units change in this way, you should expect it to take 1000 times as long for the number to update. Once your backup is large, you can't tell by looking at the total backup size whether the backup is progressing. You can tell by the file name, but if the file is a large file, the status won't change. That's why I installed an IP traffic logger.

By the way, about 27MB were backed up while I composed this note. My total backup size is about 1.3 TB.

Read Carbonite's term of usage, particularly section 14:

"Your consumption of Carbonite Products or Services may be deemed excessive if, within any month, your usage greatly exceeds the average level of monthly usage of Carbonite's customers, generally."

This does not sound "unlimited" to me.

"Carbonite may require you to switch to an appropriate Carbonite Product or Service which may result in your having to pay Carbonite additional fees for use of the appropriate product or to terminate your purchased Carbonite Products or Services and refund, on a prorated basis, any fees paid you may have paid on the unused portion of your Carbonite subscription."

Let it be known, this contract gives them the right to one day charge you extra based on the amount of data you have on their servers. Point blank. Unless the CEO puts his "truly unlimited" claim in the terms of the contract, it is worthless noise.

The problem with SkyDrive is that you can't drag and drop folders and subfolder/files. Only if you create a new folder in skydrive can you drag files in. But not folders. This means new stuff isn't too hard, but already existing folders of music and pictures are a huge pain. I installed skydrive only to find this out. No more usage for me.

I'm interested in carbonite, but hate costs. What would be sweet is external hard drives that can talk to each other. put one at home, one at relative's or friend's house. Then you could sync between each other. And you know where your data is.

I am in the free trial period for Carbonite but did not realize that they do not back up external hard drives. I have two on which I store all of my pictures. What is the best thing to do to make sure all of my digital images are backed up?

If you use a NAS that support iSCSI, like synology. The NAS storage is not an issue at all. It is seem as a real local drive in windows.

Steve, I agree. Mozy's privacy policy seems okay.

I signed up for the free trial of Carbonite yesterday and am pleased with it so far. But, I find the claim of "unlimited" storage misleading. I read in the help section of the site that if I remove a file from my local hard drive it is removed from the Carbonite Cloud after 30 days. So, the "unlimited" storage claim is clearly limited to the capacity of my internal hard drive. I'm trying to find an affordable cloud solution to store my photos and music. I currently store them all on two external hard drives to reduce the space on my PCs internal hard drive. Right now it appears the "Unlimited" storage being offered is limited to the capacity of my internal hard drive?

It's an online backup service, not an online file repository service. In backup systems, you have the concept of a backup retention policy. The reason is you maintain many levels of your backups so you can restore to an older version if so desired because it's not just storing your files, it's storing versions of your files. With that said, if you have 10gb of data being backed up, your dataset is going to be much larger after some time. Retention policies are designed to keep this from getting out of hand.

Yes, if you delete something from your computer, it will eventually delete from the backup due to the retention policy. Since it appears mozy and carbonite use a 30 day retention policy, that's how long it takes to fall off. It's to prevent an "oops", not to store just store files offsite. If you accidentally delete a file and don't realize it within 30 days, it probably wasn't important enough anyway. If you want a longer retention policy, you'll probably want to sign up for a business style setup, use a pay per usage system, or set something up at home.

Hard drive space is cheap these days. If you need more storage space, buy it. If you can't afford it, modify your data consumption habits.

There are so many bad experiances out there. When I went to research them I was amazed. Backazon.com has a great software title, cheap, easy to use, and they have versioning which is true backup.

Wuala looks interesting. Just $25 for 10GB and you can access your files from anywhere, others can access your files if you choose, you can edit, and manually send back to the backup. Worth checking out.

http://www.wuala.com/en/learn/features

I just subscribed to Carbonite; however, I would not have done so if I had known that they do not backup external hard drives. I can't believe that I had to find out the hard way (by subscribing and trying to save data backed up on an external drive) and that Carbonite did not warn me. People that buy Carbonite tend to have a lot of music and other files worth protecting on external drives. To not protect data from external drives is a major flaw and huge blow to Carbonite's overall utility. I want my money back and my subscription cancelled. For the price of Carbonite, I could have bought a 1TB external storage backup for my existing external drive and been perfectly happy. I hope this note makes its way to Carbonite's management. If I get my money back — some harm and some foul from what I believe is deceptive promotion by Carbonite — If I don't, I will be a mouse that roars. Again,I hope everyone out there understands that Carbonite does not back up data on external drives.

I was against Carbonite when I started to read this article. Then I read David Friend's response, and I was for them. Then I read the comments, and now I'm against them again. Let's review:

By "unlimited" Friend actually means:
-no external hard drives
-no network drives
-no "excessive usage," which is determined solely by Carbonite

As with most people in power, Friend needs to be stood up in front of an audience and made to answer all of these complaints before he can be trusted. Maybe he should spend more time on customer service and less on defending his company from bloggers (he's done so on several other blogs).

wow, you guys really expect a lot for a little. I have 370GB backup up on Carbonite for ~$50 a year. How can I complain? They don't backup network and external drives because they think it's reasonable (and I do too) that you should have to buy more than one license if you have more than one machine you want to backup (as opposed to just mapping drives to the other machines and abusing the one license). For about $4 a month, let carbonite do the work for you.

I agree with Rick. Carbonite is meant for backing up one computer. By allowing external drives / mount points, it opens the possibility to back up an entire network of computers with one account. Internal drives are insanely cheap at this point. Set up backup software on all the non Carbonite-protected computers to transfer relevant data to your Carbonite-protected pc. Then have Carbonite backup all relevant files on that ONE machine. This setup will provide a local backup also, which gives you a MUCH faster restoration after data loss on any of the machines. Also, internet traffic is isolated to one machine, reducing (or at least concentrating) overall traffic on your network.

@Kaiser

How hard was this to find? Carbonite clearly states no external devices here:

http://carbonite.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1386/kw/external

I strongly disagree with Rick and Carson. I only own one computer, and it has two additional HDs inside. I need the additional HDs backed up because that is where I store my graphics and other large files. ONE MACHINE, mine! My HDs are internal drives, so the question is, does Carbonite back-up all the drives INSIDE ONE machine?

NOTE: One should NEVER store huge amounts of large files on your OS's HD (C drive)! I have 300GB of photos and graphics on my internal "D" drive and THAT is what I need backed up, not the little 500MG of text files that I can copy and place on other HDs in seconds.

I find these online back-up services are useless if they can not my back-up all internal HDs! ...and I'm not the only one who thinks that!

Does anyone know of a service that backs up all the drives rather than just the "C" drive of a computer?

Velocitor: I use Carbonite, and store media on an internal drive separate from my OS/programs drive. Carbonite can and does backup both.

The complaints Carson and Rick are rebuking are people complaining about not being able to backup externally connected drives, whether through eSATA (as opposed to an internal drive's SATA), USB or Firewire. And frankly, I fully agree with them as well. I bought a 640GB internal SATA drive that performs like a beast for like $40. Internal storage is cheap and a lot harder to forget on the bus if you take it somewhere.

Seriously. Make your internal drives the main storage depository. Use a backup service there (Mozy or Carbonite, for example). Use your external drives to carry copies of your important files when traveling so that if you lose that drive, you only lost a copy, and the online backup in case something truly bad happens.

CrashPlan:
External Drives: Yes
NAS Drives: Yes
Truly Unlimited: Yes
Network Throttling: No
Unlimited data for all computers in your house: Yes
Backup to Local Drive: Yes
Backup to another computer: Yes
Law Enforcement Can See your data: No (Provide your own key/password)

Least Expensive in all scenarios: CrashPlan.

http://www.crashplan.com/consumer/features-compare.html

(I work there, took time to comment only because it was a great thread with real points.. Impressive you've read the privacy policies

My dissatisfaction with Carbonite had less to do with the limitation to internal storage - I would be perfectly happy to pay more for backing up my external - than with their misrepresentation of it. Someone thought that their deep-in-the-FAQ statement on this anounted to transparency? Really? Trust me: having contacted them to request a refund, I can assure you that misleading people about this is part of their business plan.

These are probably good services, but i choose to use one of the following;
- Unlimited web hosting can be had for as little as $44.00 a year. Why limit to just backing up data? Backup many servers to the same place.
- An eSata docking station and a few 1TB drives is superfast, stupidly simple, and the daily HD is kept offsite, readily available even if the internet is down...but that can't happen right?

I used carbonite for a year and when i had to restore to another computer....half of the data was unreadable.

CARBONITE NOT RECOMMENDED
I just went through a nightmare trying to restore data from Carbonite after my computer had to re-install windows due to a virus. Customer support had no idea how to help except to offer to 'take control of my computer'. I finally figured out how to restore (customer service did not tell me a simple fix) but then files were all over the place. It took nearly 3 days to restore 24 gig of data and will probably take weeks to find everything & put it back in the correct place. Even if you re-install the original programs, that does not mean Carbonite will put data into the correct folder. It is a mess and my hard drive is way too full of useless things they backed up. I will be cancelling the remainder of my subscription & happily return to external drive backup .. which I can restore in under an hour & only what I need.

Given the experience I have had with online backup, I am hoping to help others avoid it.

I decided to use Sugar Sync in January. On May 10, I had to do a hard drive restore of my computer – it was not a crash, so I checked and saw that 17 GB of my data, music and photos were all backed up on Sugar Sync before we proceeded. I checked a few of my most recent files and music, just to be sure I was confident in what was there.

On May 21, I was in the midst of a restore process with Sugar Sync (which was not easy) and all of my data disappeared – not kidding. The entire file structure was back onto my computer, but every folder was empty. The data had been inadvertently deleted in the process. Through a PAINFUL communication process (I could never talk to anyone by phone without paying $99 and their chat was only open 7-4 M-F) and 2 weeks, they recovered my data – which took me several more chat episodes to get restored properly.

That is, all except my music, which mysteriously would not restore.

On June 5 (yes it's now 2 weeks later) I was “chatting” with Sugar Sync online about this (with an Indian person and I mean no prejudice, just hard to communicate) who told me they would escalate my issue to their engineers (I had heard this more than once in 2 weeks), and I would hear back “as soon as possible.” Now it is June 9 and I still have yet to hear back – 5 DAYS LATER.

In the meantime 2 unbelievable things have happened:

(1) I discovered that about 2/3 of my music was missing from the backup – ie, I would have 3 songs from Black Eyed Peas on my iPod but only one of them backed up and restored to iTunes – my bad that I didn’t do a more thorough check of what was being backed up; and

(2) Three crucial folders of data from my desktop DISAPPEARED between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning – the book I had just spent a year writing, and 2 client folders. I was literally sick to my stomach – how is it possible that an online backup service actually DELETES your files? I’m fairly tech-savvy, this was not a weird user error!

Sugar Sync has yet to provide any explanation for why it randomly did not back up my iTunes properly, or why it deleted folders from my desktop. They only suggested that I "stop" backing up my desktop and do it manually until they could determine what was happening.

Even though I later found and recovered my precious data - deep in the bowels of their “deleted folders” - this has been an unbelievable nightmare and not one I hope anyone else has to go through.

Lol, Carbonites unlimited is a misnomer. Sales tactic. Unlimited with limits. It is not about indexing. It is about throttling to restrict bandwidth. Of course they want to sell unlimited accounts, but only one the ones backing up 6-11gb to stay. They are a joke.

Cabonites backup is slow. What is the point of paying for a remote backup if it takes 2-3 years to backup your files?

Mozys restore sucks too. I stumbled across a brand new company called digital backup svcs and they have best upload speeds and real time works, but not unlimited. I talked to the cust svc person over there about better pricing for an unlimited package, they said they dont WANT people backing up the entire netflix dvd catalogue

../rude - hehe, i only have a bunch of dvr recordings


Maybe mozy isnt so bad. Sure that db company was fastest, but they only want users with clearly defined limits.. Mozy doesnt seem so bad, even if the restore is a nightmare.

BTW People mentioning sync programs. I really think the best sync program out there is free. SyncTow from microsofts powertools selection. It can go both directions, can pick things, and its fast.

I use this to sync two work pcs. I setup backup sets to go to a small external HDD. Then run the other set on other pc to take from external and put on pc.

Works really well, and it was 100% free. The paid services seemed to have too many bells and whistles (that you pay for). I just wanted something to move/collaberate/replicate files.

ugh, i spelled synctoy wrong.

i dont know if you allow links, but here it is

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

Count me as a member of the growing community of totally dissatisfied Carbonite former customers.

Like a couple people above, I thought unlimited meant that. And it only does that if you have an incredibly long time to wait. The problem there is that I can create material to be backed up faster than it uploaded.

Next, their fine print as has been observed above suggests they know their product is buggy and unreliable as they have no way to cancel a subscription mid year. The service is not worth a full year for people who have to use the backups they supposedly keep.

Lastly, I needed to to my backups yesterday as my data system suffered a total wipe out. There is no way for me to create my system using Carbonite. Thus the time I put into a backup with Carbonite was wasted. Good thing I had just completed a backup to my local hard drives system a couple days earlier.

Carbonite--if you are reading this: "Your customers are frustrated with you hiding behing fine print and subtle interpretations of vague instructions! AND they are probably not going to be your customers much longer."

I no longer trusts Carbonite and urge everybody to look elsewhere for reliable backups. I had read the critical reviews of Carbonite prior to subscribing and felt I could still make it work for me being a techie type. Sadly I was wrong. Please do not waste your money and your time on Carbonite like I did.

Carbonite used $55 of my money and probably 25 hours of my time to create a false expectation that my data was reliably backed up. That same 25 hours put into copying file manually and storing the DVDs off site in a secure safe place would be much more effective and cost less.

-steve c.