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[benn600]

Has anyone else tried Carbonite?  I heard it recommended by Leo Laporte on his radio show podcasts and am currently trying the trial.  It costs about $50 per year or $90 for two years to get unlimited data backup space.  To use, you simply right click on a folder or file and select back up.

I am currently backing up my Pictures directory with about 45GB of photos and videos from our digital cameras.  Our upload speed is above average so I should get about 4-5 GB per day, which is double their estimates.  Granted I will wait and see!  But, I'm going to let this run for the two weeks or so to backup my pictures and if I like it--I'll be toward the end of my trial--I may buy the subscription.  I may start with one year just in case I decided I don't want it but that's less than half the price of a 500 GB hard drive for probably the most secure backup I could have!  I am still going to use my 2 500GB drives for backup in addition to this.

The desire came from finding out how inexpensive this is.  I remember other systems usually were double that price for 50 GB or less!  This is a great deal!  I asked them if I could upload my entire server of data, at just under 4,000 GB and they said sure.  It will just take a while, lol.  A few years!  lol.  Maybe my pictures and music first, which will take a few months.  Then I'll consider other things.  It may even be worth upgrading our DSL speed if we can.

[GHammer]

I don't think so.
They reserve the right to change the "unlimited" offer for those who exceed their average. That seems to be 50 Gb from what I have read.
Also, your 4,000 Gb may just take a while. From their website:

"To keep users with very high speed Internet connections from hogging all our bandwidth and storage, we limit backups to .5GB per day once you have sent us 50GB of data. So if your initial backup is, say 40GB, it should run at full speed (2-3GB per day) until it is complete. If you add 1 GB of new data each day, after 10 days you'll have 50GB in your backup. After another 100 days, you'll have 100GB in your backup. There is no size limit. But you can only send us .5GB of new data each day once you have passed the 50GB threshold."

[benn600]

Thank you for finding and reporting that.  It really changes things.

I found it tough to believe the unlimited data promise--so they get ya a different way!  Lol.  300GB ... two years of uploading; maybe not.

Also, just curious.  What do you think they are using to store all this data?  Lots of RAID arrays?  They obviously need redundancy but even with RAID, things can go wrong!  Is there a backup plan for them beyond RAID?  Do they keep two copies of everyone's data?

I should rent out space on my server, lol.  Although I'm down to only 2.37 TB free now (yikes!)
at 50 GB per person: I could comfortably hold 40 accounts at $50 a year, $2K!  I guess that would be an acceptable business model.  If I used my entire server's space I could get the cost of the server back after one initial year of payment!

[KingSparta]

Has anyone else tried Carbonite?

"The Corbomite Maneuver" Was A Star Trek Episode

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/videoview?id=2108409&episodeid=68666&count=-1

[DaveFriend]

Hi, I'm the CEO of Carbonite and thought I would answer some of your questions.

First, I don't know where the 50GB rumor came from, but it's not true.  We have never enforced any limits on backup.  Our biggest user is about 300GB.  At typical DSL upload speeds of 350kbps, you'll be able to upload about 2.5-3GB per day, so it's really not very practical to backup more than a couple hundred GBs over DSL or Cable. 

We do use RAID-6 disk arrays and with several billion files backed up now, but you have to lose 3 disks in an array simultaneously to lose any data, plus your PC has to fail at the same time.  While no backup is ever 100%, this is so close to it that most people would not pay double to have a backup of the backup. 

Thanks for recommending Carbonite, and if anyone has any questions, please feel free to contact me at david.friend@carbonite.com. 

Regards,
Dave Friend

[benn600]

Now that is pretty impressive.  That the CEO of Carbonite is viewing these threads and discussing with us!  Wow!

To keep users with very high speed Internet connections from hogging all our bandwidth and storage, we limit backups to .5GB per day once you have sent us 50GB of data. So if your initial backup is, say 40GB, it should run at full speed (2-3GB per day) until it is complete. If you add 1 GB of new data each day, after 10 days you'll have 50GB in your backup. After 100 days, you’ll have 100GB in your backup. There is no size limit. But you can only send us .5GB of new data each day once you have passed the 50GB threshold.

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:waNGWR1n_TkJ:www.carbonite.com/faqs_tech.aspx%3Fkbid%3D2440%26sourcetag%3DAFF:2440%26contenttag%3Dland0506-001+site:carbonite.com+50GB&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Now that is a cached Google page but it's right from "your" Carbonite site.

If they do impose this limit, they (YOU) need Extra special accounts that cost $150 a year that have a 500GB cap, for instance.

My current server runs in RAID6 as well.  But I'm using a whopping 16 drives @ 500GB each on this single logical drive.

And for a backup to fail, like you said your computer would have the fail at the same time as Carbonite's backup computers.  As long as only one fails, you're good.

[olarte]

Uhm I guess carbonite is cool for average folks with  a small amount of data... anything over 50gb etc becomes a problem not only with carbonite but even with your own ISP's upload\download limits.

I for one chose another route.

I have two shares at home, on two separate computers. One I read\write\modify the media on, the other one is a read only share that anyone in my family can access for ipods, MC etc...

Then I use Syncbackse (EXCELLENT backup program by the way for about $25 for all your home pcs), to backup from the main share, to the read-only share, and also to an external Mybook (WD) 500gb drive (they now go for like 129.00 on sale.

I keep that Mybook at the office, (offsite) turned off and disconnected. so no viruses, surges etc can get to it.

I plan in the next year or two, to get newer\bigger external drives to replace the old ones and restore data to them just in case.

I've heard of others backing up to DVDs that later become unreadable in a few years. At least with a harddrive you can use SyncbackSe to backup all at once, and not sit there babysitting the process.

[benn600]

I use a combination of different techniques--drives, optical media, etc.

My limitation would not be my ISP.  I have a good upload speed and haven't had any trouble yet even with tons of uploading when streaming MC at work.

Let's wait for a response from Carbonite's CEO.

[newsposter]

I have multiple, identical disk arrays...

Say I'm using 3 arrays.  Each array will hold 33% of my 'live' data.  Each array also holds a compressed, real time backup of the other two arrays.  The disk drives are arranged in mirrored sets totalling about 1.5 Tb in each unit.  Local boot drives are mirrored and run from the motherboard disk ports.  Array disk runs from dedicated PCI cards.

Each array communicates with it's brothers via a dedicated gigE subnet using an Intel-chipped, co-processed network card and a network switch that is rated to sustain constant gigE communications between those ports.  End-user communications are also via gigE (on a separate subnet) but via the motherboard network port.

So not only is the end-user i/o load spread out among 3 arrays, their disks, controllers, and network ports, I would have to lose all three arrays to lose any data.