Does anyone know or has any experience with this?It's an online back-up system and they offer unlimited space for backing up your stuff for 50$ a year.I've been looking for something like this for quite awhile, but they all have either very limited space or they you pay the jackpot for anything over an x amount.This sounds too good to be true and when it's like that automatically alarm bells start ringing with me.However, I got this mail through the WinZip mailing list, which I don't believe would screw people over.
Why wouldn't you consider an external drive for a back-up?Like this maybe.http://www.frys.com/product/5700772?site=sa:Homepage%20Pod:Pod4 Back-up your files and store it off site.just a thought
I have my stuff backed up on two external drives stored off site.And I will continue to do that, but I figured Murphy's a b***h and if my house burns down, I'm quite sure the two other places I have stored the stuff off-site will burn down simultaneously ;)I've been trying to find terms and conditions for this Carbonite, but there's nothing really on the website.Did see this, which makes me wonder:
I could just imagine that if you can store unlimited amounts of data for only 50$ and something happens and you need the stuff, they'd charge you the jackpot for downloading your stuff back to your comp...I think I need to send some mails...
Marinusse check out the terms:http://www.carbonite.com/terms/ Hope this helps
Thanks Q!That actually wasn't too hard to find, if only I checked from the main site... *grins*
Well you could always call the BBB.See if they have any complaints.did not read the entire contract but they got their basses covered.Good luck hope you find an answer.
I use carbonite. Seems to be a good workhorse and you don't need to remember to do backups. I use to backup to an external drive and then place that in a brick cellar, to be safe from both fire and burgalry (thieves will often grab computer and any other kit that happens to be around, so no good leaving your disk near the computer), but you know $50 dollars a year to save all that faffing around does not seem a bad deal.You can see what you have backup up and retrieve at any time.
Does anyone worry that no matter what they say, or what their terms and conditions are, that you are turning over all of your data, contacts, passwords, personal files, emails, internet history, and everything else that is on your drive to a site in "the cloud"? Conceptually, and practically, "the cloud" is a very appealing way to manage our data. The one thing that I cannot get a comfort level about is security. I know they say that our data is encrypted and can only be decrypted by us, and that all our data is secure. I just am not convinced that anyone with bad intentions, whatever the motive might be, could decrypt those files if they really wanted to. Not that I have anything illegal on my computer, there is a lot of personal data about me and my family, and all my financial information, legal issues, and other private information that is nobody's business but mine. I know what can be done electronically, and my experience tells me that if it can be done, it will be done.I'm just saying .........
I'd say that your data, if they say it's double encrypted, is as safe on their "cloud" as on your home computer. I bet the stuff on your home computer isn't double encrypted, and there your information is even more sensitive.I would back-up only my work files and photography stuff. No other sensitive files.
It only backs up the areas you tell it to back up. Of course they could trick you, but any program you install on your internet connected computer could potentially do that, carbonite has no advantage in that respect.As far as passwords are concerned, they are normally not stored on disk and as such if I wanted to get your passwords rather than use a backup service I would be more likely to use something that sniffs your activity.
In the country I live in (Norway) it's quite commond that insurance companys offer free unlimited secure online storage of photos for their customers. My isp also offers up to 100 GB storage without any extra costs, over that you have to pay extra.Don't know where you live, but perhaps it's something worth checking out?
I'm in Finland, and I've checked it out, but here it's just a bunch of thieves.The cheapest offer I got was just under 1000 euros per year for all my stuff (about 600 gigs at the moment).
I looked at them, but was miffed that they don't handle network attached storage, which is what I wanted to back up. They've been promising "Soon!" for two years now. I eventually just went with a pair of half-terabyte drives that I store at another location.Other than that limitation, this is the system I was going to go with. It reviews well, and people who use it seem to like it.
I don't use it, but i personally have heard very good things about them and know people who use it religiously with good success. The way their encryption works is that the files are encrypted on your computer then sent through an encrypted connection to the carbonite servers. While it's in the cloud, even carbonite cannot see what is in your data. Only when it comes back to your computer can it be decrypted.
Well... I signed up and am uploading now.Let's see how it goes...(not too fast, the uploading, I must add...)
marinuse saidnot too fast, the uploading, I must add...
ADSL, and most cable systems, have a much slowwer upload speed than download, plus carbonite works in the background, so it does take a long time for it to catch up. Mine had been going for a couple of weeks before I decided to leave the computer on all the time so it could catch up!Once it is up to date it doesn't seem to do too bad! By the way, I have my browser set to put downloads into the same directory and I have set that to not backup, as it is all stuff I could download again if needed, and it saves a lot of wasted bandwith.
Yeah, I'm now down-selecting my back-ups. Had about 400GB, but that's going to take half a year to upload :o/
My sustained upload speed is quite slow, about 12KB/s, which equates to 43MB an hour or 1GB a day. On average that is enough for me. My work is not media related and my project files are mostly at most 10's of megabytes, and that would a major project scanning over several months.But photos is a different ball game. I usually use a card reader and only take off the photos I actually use and leave the rubbish behind. When I need to select from a large set I dump them into a temp folder which does not get backed up. This is as much for keeping my disk clean as letting Carbonite work.But clearly if you were a professional event photgrapher or doing video PP work you would have to look carefully at your upload speed!Deselecting less important folders is not a bad idea, you can always reselect them when carbonite goes green.