Carbonite: FAIL, Mozy: ON NOTICE
Update: Please also read part 2 and part 3 for my complete take on online backup services.
Ok, so I’m a little OCD at times… especially when making purchases. It took me almost an hour to pick out a pair of cowboy boots when I was at Allen’s Boots in Austin last time my partner and I went on vacation. I am picky. I like things to be nice and to live up to my expectations.
I’ve been waffling between Carbonite and Mozy for like a week. It’s 5$/mo, in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter. If one sucks I can switch. But that’s me. I try to minimize these tendencies, but sometimes I just can’t let go.
Here’s the breakdown of what I learned before I got into either.
Mozy
- Better client
- Has varying levels of service (Free/Home/Business)
- Recently bought by EMC
- 5$/mo, 60$/year
Carbonite
- Cheaper (50$/year)
- Bad Logo
- Single level of service
This is what I’d heard inferred from the blogs, reviews, and company websites. I flip and flop, and actually create my Mozy account, download and install the software, only to at the last minute change my mind and uninstall it without configuring it and decide I want Carbonite. I was scared by the EMC acquisition a little. I thought they might want to make it more corporate and less home user friendly. This was compounded by their already tiered pricing schedule. I don’t understand how a business needs to pay $0.50/GB/mo but a home user has a flat rate. A larger business would probably use more yes, but a home business is probably going to use about the same as a home user. It seemed a bit lawyer-y to me, and with the acquisition by EMC I only foresaw that getting worse.
So I installed Carbonite, set it up, and then went to go try to back up my external 500GB drive. That’s when Carbonite FAILED. They don’t support backing up external and/or removable drives. They just don’t. The application (which is kind of annoying and only seems to exist as an explorer extension. I couldn’t find any interface which let me just select folders and see what folders are already selected) simply didn’t register my external hard drive as something it could back up. Then I checked their support website (which for me at this exact moment is generating errors instead of search results about 4 out of 5 times I try to search) and found this customer support article. They don’t support backup of external devices.
“Check back soon for a Carbonite service plan that will allow you to back up your external drives.” Yeah I probably won’t.
Ugly!
And another thing, unrelated to their performance as a backup service, but perhaps of their performance in the marketplace: their logo is ugly. It’s this weird lock that looks like a 3rd grader drew it. A backup service’s logo should instill feelings of “Your data is safe. You have nothing to worry about. We are rock solid and hardcore.” This logo makes me feel like “Your data will be colored on and hung on the side of the refrigerator.”
Ok, then I did a system restore to get all that crap off my computer and then installed Mozy. Straight out of the install, it says it can’t connect to the service. I check, the service is running. It simply won’t connect. Shey says check my firewall, I add the program according to the Mozy support article on firewalls. Still no go. I have to disable my windows firewall in order for it to work. That’s awesome.
So right now I am not a happy camper. I just want to backup my data. I think I can get Mozy to work with a little more futzing with firewall settings. I was planning on paying for it, but for right now, I’m just going to back up my doc files and use the free version until I’m sure it’s not completely worthless.
I know one thing for certain. Neither of these services is nice, and neither of them have lived up to my expectations.
James: Hi, I’m the CEO of Carbonite and I noticed your comments about Carbonite on your blog. Backing up external hard drives is a feature that is available in our PLUS product which will be available shortly. Carbonite didn’t fail to back up your hard drive – we state clearly on the web site that the BASIC version does not back up external hard drives. Doing so would alter the economics of our business model and would require that we charge everyone a much higher price, or abandon our UNLIMITED backup policy which most of our customers really like.
Regards,
Dave Friend, CEO
Carbonite, Inc.
http://www.carbonite.com Carbonite Online Backup
Posted on 23-Oct-07 at 9:03 am | Permalink
I can understand the decision not to backup network shares, that makes sense, but not backing up a drive simply because it’s not mounted *inside* my computer doesn’t make any sense. I could take my external drive, mount it inside my machine, and your software would have no problem.
It does state the fact that you don’t support external drives on your website, but it’s not very prominently displayed. As I stated I spent a lot of time considering the two (Mozy vs. Carbonite) and did a lot of research and never ran across that information until after I already had it installed and running and trying to figure out why it wouldn’t recognize my external hard drive.
I wanted to back up my files, and your product failed to perform that task.
Anyway, since Mozy *does* back up external drives, unless you’re upcoming “PLUS” product does that for less than 10$ more than your current product (10$ being the price difference between Mozy and Carbonite’s current unlimited offering), you’re pretty much dead in the water.
Posted on 23-Oct-07 at 9:55 am | Permalink
I have tried repeatedly to contact Carbonite by phone. They basically don’t answer. I really was trying to get a reseller account but they don’t ever respond to their own reseller request forms (I completed two and waited two months) I then called and sent emails (5 phone calls and long wait with no answer by human, 6 emails and no response whatsoever). Finally on the 6th phone call I waited long enough to actually talk to a human (about 45 minutes) and they said the reseller guy was on the other line but *promised* he would call back as soon as he got off the line. …that was 10 days ago and counting …must be a long phone call.
I get really sick of *virtual world* companies who have no commitment to *real world* customer service. They usually fail with a resounding thud. I bet money on the demise of this one.
Posted on 04-Mar-08 at 4:35 pm | Permalink
I’ve been a Carbonite subscriber for almost a year. I recently suffered a hard drive failure and was very proud of myself for knowing this would happen AGAIN and being prepared. Little did I know. I’ve been attempting to do a partial recovery of my files for 5 days. Partial as I’m waiting on a new drive from Western Digital. For the last 2 days the service has been ’stuck’. The interface is clunky at best and there is no way to retrieve your files except wait for something to happen.
When I first attempted to recover my files I noticed that all the folders on Carbonite showed a date corresponding to a date last year when I first subscribed. Not good when you expect to recover your most recent files. Sure enough the few files I was able to recover were old files. I sent an email to Customer Support and they responded within 12 hours which was acceptable. Subsequent email requests from me, both by Replying to the original and going back to customer support have met deaf ears - no response in over 24 hours. Their customer support form says it may take 72 hours to respond because they’re busy. I don’t know about others, but when I’ve had a hard drive failure and can’t recover my files, 72 hours is a little slow for customer support assistance. I obviously need files as quickly as possible.
The recovery interface is generated on your computer and there is nothing on Carbonite website that I can find which allows you to see your files. When I look at the Carbonite “InfoCenter” screen which shows the file restore status I currently see 14 files waiting for restoration. It also says I have recovered 397 files. Those were those files which are a year old which I was able to restore immediately. Virtually worthless. When I click on “Recovery Log” I see that it says “Files Pending Restore (14 files). I click on this so I can see the files and it only shows 2 files - Outlook.pst (nice to have eh?) and a spreadsheet I need. That hasn’t change in two days. They are marked “Highest Priority” which the user can select to speed up recovery of individual files. The Outlook file restore is supposedly “In progress”. Not that I have noticed.
So, to be fair, it might be something I have done or am doing that is causing this failure. I’ve restarted my computer many times over the past several days. I’ve restarted my cable modem and router several times as suggested by the first and only email I’ve received from Carbonite Customer Support. This email also said that Carbonite is showing connection problems. I’ve not noticed any connection problems on my end. I’m able to download and upload files. Nothing seems to help. I should also say that my failed drive was running Vista and I’m attempting to restore some files I need onto a XP drive. I don’t think that matters and if it does then that’s another negative about this service.
Rather than this clunky and non-functioning (for me) interface, I would prefer to have access to my files on a website where I can download them from there. Either individually or as a massive restore. I would really like to have my files that I paid a fee to have stored and accessible to me in the event I need them. I need them. Now what do I do?
Posted on 06-Mar-08 at 2:16 pm | Permalink
Rich:
Nothing terribly helpful for you now, but Mozy does have a web interface that is almost exactly what you describe. It’s ~5 Months after this post, and I am quite happy with my Mozy subscription. It was a little janky at the beginning, but they seem to have fixed at least all the issues that affected me.
I haven’t really had any issues with it in a couple months, and even then it was relatively minor (Mozy never really has been very happy with Vista’s new permission scheme in my experience).
Posted on 07-Mar-08 at 9:13 am | Permalink
Thanks James, I have been over to Mozy’s site, but don’t want to try anything different until I’ve totally exhausted all attempts to recover my back-up from Carbonite.
Follow-up. I’ve received another email from Kunal, 48 hours after my email to him/her. Kunal observed that I was restoring files at 700kbs and ask if my restore was done. Uh, no Kunal, not even close.
It seems that anytime you disturb the restore by changing the priority or deleting files from the restore - the restore goes into hibernation for some unknown length of time.
When I started my computer this morning I decided to just use the Restore Wizard and see what happened. Hey, it started restoring right away. But wait, it was restoring some windows files which I perhaps don’t want restored as I’ve just done a fresh OS install with all the umpteen updates and Vista is actually running smoothly. So, I deleted all those Windows files from the restore. Ah ah ah, shouldn’t have done that apparently as now the restore is frozen while it thinks about my cheeky actions. It’s been a couple of hours with no action.
I did get my spreadsheet yesterday finally. I had to cancel the email recovery and wait several hours for new action. I have not been able to get my email files back as the last attempt showed errors in the file. I have an email request into Kunal as well as Cornelius asking what I have to do in order to restore an email file without errors. If the support holds true to form I might have a response in a day or two.
If this is the best they can do I’m not impressed…..more to follow, I hope.
Posted on 08-Mar-08 at 1:50 pm | Permalink
That’s pretty insane. I hope things work out for you.
Posted on 08-Mar-08 at 2:13 pm | Permalink
Update as of 03/09. 1399 files recovered. I’ve had some success recovering files. I make very sure I do not include the pst file in the recovery request as that stops the recovery, apparently because it has errors in it. The recovery speed is good if the files are good. I’m not sure where the errors come from in a file.
I am trying to recover my email pst file by itself. I attempted another restore on that file on the 8th. It’s been sitting in the recovery window which shows it’s in the process of being recovered. So far nothing has come down the ‘pipe’. I’ve sent an email to Kunal asking if Carbonite can find a file that does not have errors in it so that I can restore it. I’ve sent three emails requesting assistance on this issue. Two requests on the 7th, one to Kunal and one to Cornelius. And one request on the 8th. I’m waiting for a response. If they hold true to form I should hear something on the 10th which is two days after my request. Hopefully, they will respond to this issue and resolve it.
Posted on 09-Mar-08 at 1:46 pm | Permalink
Rich,
I’m very sorry to hear that your restore process has been so difficult. One item you mentioned at least once or twice during your thread above is that during the restore process you deleted items from the restore, and that put the restore into a problem state.
Just to give a bit of background on why that is — on any Windows computer there are a number of duplicate files. In some cases these are program sample files (such as the few songs that are in your My Music folder and few pictures in your My Pictures folder when you install Windows), and in some cases you may just have multiple copies of various files of your own in different locations on your computer. To reduce upload/download time, Carbonite backs up each of the files that have duplicates _once_, and then records the locations of all of the other copies of the file. When you restore, Carbonite restores the first one, and then when it gets to the point in the restore where the next copy of the duplicated file is required, it copies the file locally from the first location to the other location(s). Unfortunately, if you delete the source file before Carbonite has the opportunity to copy it to the other locations, you will delay your restore operation.
I was able to find your support requests and review the history in our internal system, and found the most recent local log file you sent us. In that copy of the log, the first “part” of your .pst file had begun to restore (on Wed, 5 Mar 2008 20:58:35 UTC). Unfortunately, since this log file is a bit outdated now, I don’t see the errors you’ve indicated above. I’m going to send you a reply via e-mail directly so that I can get a more recent copy of your logs, and I’m certain we can assist you with this problem.
Best regards,
Len Pallazola
Manager, Customer Service Systems
Carbonite, Inc.
Posted on 10-Mar-08 at 2:16 pm | Permalink
Hi Rich,
I got an error when posting a reply a moment ago, and I’m not sure if it is awaiting moderation or lost, so a quick summary:
I have located your support requests in our system and reviewed the most recent log files you’ve sent us (which were from about five days ago). I’d like to see the most recent to assist with your .pst issue - the logs I saw showed the .pst start restoring on Wed, 5 Mar 2008 20:58:35 UTC - at that point the restore was ongoing though so I didn’t get to see the errors you mentioned in the thread above.
I’ll contact you via e-mail for the logs, and I’ll make sure you get a rapid turnaround on this issue. I apologize that it’s gone on so long and has been so frustrating for you. I’m confident that we can resolve this issue.
Sincerely,
Len Pallazola
Manager, Customer Service Systems
Carbonite, Inc.
Posted on 10-Mar-08 at 2:21 pm | Permalink
My thanks to Len for his response. Unfortunately, not much has changed for the better as of this date.
Yesterday, the 11th I received a welcome email from Cornelius at Carbonite offering to assist. In part he stated:
“Your Outlook.pst file is very large. The file is restoring fine, but an abrupt connection error stops it mid-restore and then is unable to pick up where it left off, due to the abruptness of the connection issue. When Carbonite restores a large file, it restores the file in “parts.” Unfortunately, there is no way to tell exactly how many parts the file is. Before the connection issue, the last “part” restored was:
1205132394 @ GetFile: Restored part 308 of file (C49575-S16791-F13506-G256-V445, 33 blocks).
Whenever a connection interruption occurs, Carbonite will attempt to pick up where it left off. In this case, however, it was unable to do so. If you have a way of getting a more stable connection - either by plugging directly in to your router or temporarily disabling firewall or traffic monitoring software - do so and start the restore again.”
I don’t have a firewall or traffic monitoring software running and I’m on the router. So, I started the restore again at 0836. I shut down the browser, email program, and left the download to do its thing. I did bring up the Performance Monitor so I could see if there was anything running which could disrupt the download. Nothing but Carbonite and the usual Windows stuff.
As you can see from Cornelius’s email above, at one time several days ago I had downloaded 308 parts of my pst file. As of 1736 yesterday, 9 hours of nothing running but Carbonite, I had downloaded 144 parts. Each part was taking approximately 4 minutes. So, just to get to the point as noted above with 308 parts this was going to take over 20 hours…….and that’s not a complete file. Who knows how many parts my file has? WOW! Ok, just keep going…
Well, yeah except right about that time in my restore efforts, the Carbonite service decided to restart. Then the log shows a lot of chatter in the service and then I got the BSOD. Yep, crashed. What the hell? Ok, this is Vista so not unexpected. I’ll just restart and Carbonite will pick up where we were. Wrong again!
Upon restart the Carbonite service doesn’t know diddly about my restore. Not the pst file or any other files. It shows I have not restored any files whatsoever. Uh, say what? There’s the temporary file for my email on my desktop – empty after 9 hours – plus what about all the other files I have been able to restore earlier?
Some fun yeah? So, another email to Cornelius. I attached the log file so he could see what happened. BTW, I just downloaded a 29.8MB exe file with no problems and it took about a minute. Go figure.
Posted on 12-Mar-08 at 1:13 pm | Permalink
I should have added, the 29.8 exe file I mentioned in the last paragraph was NOT through Carbonite. That was a program file needed to restore my hard drive.
Posted on 12-Mar-08 at 8:46 pm | Permalink
Final installment, thanks to all for letting me rant during the last several days. This is a copy of the email sent to Carbonite. I will leave it up to everyone else to decide the best method to use for back-up.
“Gentlemen,
Success! Yes, hard as it is to believe, I have finally restored my pst file. It is 1.08GB, 378 parts, and took 14:01:31 to download. Yesterday during my conversation with the RoadRunner tech he suggested taking the router out of the equation and connecting straight to the cable modem. I believe Len or Cornelius also suggested that early on in the process. My bad for not listening as apparently that did the trick. I have no idea why your service and my router don’t get along and perhaps the router isn’t the issue. The ping tests didn’t show any difference with or without the router.
I would like to thank all of you for your support in this matter. Frustrating as it was, I feel that your hearts were in the right place and you were always professional in your actions.
Having said that, I feel that your service is seriously lacking in that it takes too long to download a large file, the download is too sensitive to online issues, the partial download disappears and can’t be restarted (in my experience), and that you don’t offer a hard copy option. If you could have overnighted a DVD containing my files this incident never would have happened. In addition, response time to restore issue emails is way too long. When I need to restore files waiting even 24 hours for someone to respond to my problem is not good service. In your defense I did not call you on a landline although I did see somewhere online that you have bad grades on that front. However, I don’t know that first hand. In addition, I believe Len set up a ‘restore’ email address which might help. Good work making an attempt to respond to this issue.
I like the idea of online file storage as I have suffered through many hard drive failures including primary and back-up drives at the same time. That was the reason I went to online back-up last year. At this point I’m not satisfied. While I appreciate the additional 3 months of subscription, unless you are going to offer a hard copy option in the very near future I have to look for another service. A hard drive failure is traumatic enough, having to fight for the restore is too much.”
Posted on 15-Mar-08 at 3:04 pm | Permalink
I also paid for Carbonite backup service on May of 2007. Thank God I can NOT renew this May. I too was upset that Carbonite would not backup my external hard drives. I could understand if people had multiple (huge) storage banks, but for one or two external drives on a home computer… sad not to offer.
I am furthur upset right now while waiting for my single 80 gig hardrive to restore from the Carbonite backup and restore screen. it is agonizingly slow. After two days I am still short of 20% restored!!! I can see why they do not want external drives backed up… It would be a month to restore!!
When I called customer service to “attempt” to speak to a “live” person, I was told I am the 13th caller and will experience a “long” wait time… (unless I was willing to pay $19.99 on my credit card and get “prefered” customer service)!! I would actually need to pay to have someone answer the phone! Forget it David… you are NO “friend”. I need to contact Rush and ask him why he promotes this on his radio program… hell, all Fox news radio shows do… Not happy.
I will need to learn to backup important files to my own external hard drives as well as try Mozy for the added security of “worse case scenarios”.
Hope all learn from our bad choices, “Joe Decks”
Posted on 01-Apr-08 at 9:57 am | Permalink
I’m a journalist and signed up with Carbonite two months ago. Three weeks ago I needed to restore some photos for a story I was working on. Didn’t work. Called tech support – they couldn’t figure it out. I missed my deadline – didn’t have photos. Three weeks went by. Finally, their tech support guy email me: “your data was unrecoverable during the server downtime due to a power failure. I have added free 6 months on to your account to make up for this.” How come they don’t have a backup for their own system? Am I screwed or is there anything I can do about this?
Posted on 20-Jul-08 at 12:08 pm | Permalink
@Elle:
That sounds pretty horrible. Unfortunately I don’t have many suggestions for you, after signing up with mozy, I haven’t looked back and don’t know anyone/anything about carbonite these days.
Good luck to you.
Posted on 20-Jul-08 at 1:04 pm | Permalink
I tried out Mozy but I run a home based business and their business rates were too expensive. I canceled and am trying out Carbonite and have run into the same problem of not being able to backup external drives. Annoying. Seems like somebody else could come out and copy the business model of these two guys but give us what we want and have a nice little business.
Posted on 29-Sep-08 at 11:42 am | Permalink