[BZZ] Carbonite

[digitaldiscipline]

Having declined to participate in a few Bzz campaigns due to lack of applicability, I thought that it would be interesting to see what an automated remote backup would be like, especially with potential hardware upgrades in my future.

Enter Carbonite. First off, props for a clever name. Nice to see this technology is becoming available to people not on Bespin or Hutt. ;-)

As far as use, it's rock simple. Install client, select files/drives/directories to back up, click go, and forget about it. Wanting to stress-test the service, I backed up a whole lot of stuff (about 45 of 175GB). Because it works inobtrusively and tries not to hog bandwidth, this took just under three weeks. Call it ~2GB per day.

The client just sits quietly in the toolbar (yellow for "backing stuff up," green for "everything's backed up," and red for "Lord Vader, the rebels are approaching"), letting you know it's doing its thing.

It integrates with the Windows right-click menu and My Computer - the former gives backup options (variations yes/no, pretty much), the latter allows you to restore files. Having used similar software for remote file storage at the office, frankly, I like this better. No user config required, nothing fancy, no flaming hoops of barbed wire to jump through, just open the Carbonite folder like any other local hard drive.

Recovering files is also easy - find the file/folder/etc you want to recover, right-click, and there you go. It even (and this is what caught my eye) offers a full restore mode - you build a replacement or resurrect a system via nuke and pave, all you need to do is install the Carbonite client, prove you're you, and enter recovery mode, and it will go to town, putting stuff back the way it was before Bad (or Expensive) Stuff Happened.

My only quibble is that it didn't, for whatever reason, backup all the subdirectories in certain folders (it did some, but not all), and never said the first thing about it.

Giving more granular control over this would be good - I assume most users will be more selective about things - merely selecting "My Documents" and "Favorites" and "My Pictures" and "Goat videos" rather than "everything but the porn, R2." ;-)

They're offering free 30 day trials (use offer code BUZZ or BZZ) to friends of BzzAgents, if anyone wants to give it a go. Carbonite.com (obviously, heh).

Comments

[ladysoleil.livejournal.com]

It does sound kind of nifty. I haven't signed up for this campaign because I didn't think I'd need it and I have a portable hard drive backup and burned DVD's of the critical stuff, but I might give it a whirl.

My issue is mostly that once the trial is up, it becomes yet another subscription to stuff on the intarnet. I feel like I already have too many subscriptions to stuff as it is.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

I haven't decided whether or not i'll spring for it once my trial expires; is $50/yr worth it for me? I can't say.

I'm probably going to touch base with them to see if they do a secure enterprise-level variant, suitable for office purposes.

[juliabk.livejournal.com]

I'm still trying to process why someone *wouldn't* want to backup their porn.

:-):-)