James Thigpen

Back in the day I wrestled with the decision between Mozy and Carbonite. I eventually chose Mozy and I’ve been incredibly happy with it. It’s already saved my bacon a couple times, and I find the combination web/local interface to be incredibly helpful. Unfortunately not everyone has been as lucky as I have.

Rich B. left me a comment regarding his current Carbonite situation. Here’s an excerpt:

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.

Mozy hasn’t been a cakewalk either. It’s got it’s own share of idiosyncrasies, but nothing like that.

Software Engineering lessons to take away? Nothing new: Think about your users, Consider the human elements of software design (and further software support), and Interface is crucial.

That’s an interesting question: How do considerations for continued support for production software influence design?