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.

Hi David,

Thank you so much for taking the time to respond to my blog post.

I did email Carbonite support on the 16th Feb 2009, the email was entitled "RE: Backup Max size?". I received an acknowledgemnt that the email had been received but didn't receive a reply. I presumed this was because Carbonite prefered not to be asked directly about how "unlimited" the deal really is!

If as you say, Carbonite is truly unlimited, the unlimited package is actually cheaper than Mozy.

Regarding people complaining, here are a few examples of people complaining about Carbonite not being unlimited:

http://www.nickstarr.com/2006/06/29/carbonite-when-unlimited-is-limited/ -
http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2008/08/12/carbonite-backup-service-unlimited/#comment-173174
http://davie.wordpress.com/2006/06/30/couchsurfingcom-goes-down-but-a-lesson-learned/
http://yettocome.blogspot.com/2008/03/carbonite-not-so-good-restore.html

It appears you're aware these complaints as you seem to have already replied to them.

Thanks very much David. As you suggested, I will have to give Carbonite Unlimited a try and update this post accordingly.

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?