The Tom Kirkham Show

Carbonite is storing ~35GB for me (4.95/mo.) but I’m limited to my internal drives. I can’t backup my USB drives. Cést la vié.

Just went through and completed (incomplete) a restore. While comparing some restored folders I discovered BIG GAPS in file listings.

I knew one has to right click and select “back this up” to enable exe, dll and others to be backed up. What I didn’t know is how many file types are excluded. I read that file names with underscores and folders named i386 were excluded. Wow, I happen to love using underscores in file names. Finally I found the complete list of file exclusions right here!

You will learn that Carbonite’s exclusions will make it impractical for any user doing serious work who has multi gigabytes of data. Imagin going folder by folder, file by file through thousands of files until one has found them all?!

I learned it is impossible to inventory/compare thousands of files to insure one is not missing something important.

I discovered how SLOW explorer runs when accessing the Carbonite Backup Drive. Mine crashed three out of five attempts. I NEVER was able to view the recovery log. My system would not display it. 2.4GHZ w/2GB RAM and sis 651 32MB video card.

It is my opinion that the online backup industry is in its infancy with lots of business models testing the waters. Consider Carbonites liberal definition of the term ‘unlimited’. http://www.nickstarr.com/2006/06/29/carbonite-when-unlimited-is-limited/

Thanks for this post Tom. I'll have to do some more research. Check out Life Hacker and Backup Review.