Comments on: Carbonite Review

By: Greg Steele

Greg Steele — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 21:16:27 +0000

I’m not happy with Carbonite.
For an “unlimited” service, i was thrilled that I’d have all of my movies and pictures secured in an off-site location just in case of fire or other disaster.
Like other reviewers have stated, they DRAMATICALLY slow down your back-up speed after a set amount and it only backs up about 1GB/day (and that’s leaving your computer on and connected 24 hours. I have a lot of files and I doubt they will even be backed up before the end of my 3 year contract.

Very disappointed. Very disappointed and I will not be renewing with them.
~Greg in California

By: shon

shon — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 23:47:11 +0000

Carbonite will slow down your upload speed when you hit around 100GB. I backup allot of HD video and this process is sooooo slow. It can take days to backup 5 GB. They say unlimited but they slow down the process.

By: Ira

Ira — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 21:29:38 +0000

Carbonite.ca – I’ve spend close to a total for FOUR hours just trying to get to tech support, JUST TODAY. Once I’ve got an answer, after 10 min the call dropped from your side and I’ve got a busy signal. Calling back it is impossible to talk to a supervisor, or to get tech support under 1.5 hours. Their service is abysmal. Stay away!

By: Peter Ohlhausen

Peter Ohlhausen — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 15:59:20 +0000

You might want to reconsider recommending Carbonite. Carbonite claims “No file left behind.” Not so. After 8 months, it still has not completed my initial backup (approx 450 GB). Its tech support is actually quite funny–send them a question, and they will reply with something completely unresponsive, over and over. It’s as if they don’t even read your questions. Ask for a supervisor, and you get another non-response. I have small wmv files under My Documents, and Carbonite says “Files of this type are not backed up.” I’ve sent them screen shots, and the staff has no reply. If it takes almost a year to do the initial backup, then a crash within that year will not be recoverable. So, be careful if you feel your files are important. To repeat, tech support is 100 percent hopeless.

By: Ira

Ira — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 19:33:51 +0000

After 1 year of using Carbonite, trying to backup became a nightmare. It just does not work. I don’t have anything that can interfere with uploading, all filters were setup. No new applications were installed, no viruses, nothing. It just stopped. Carbonite tech support is unable to fix the issue. Installing/re installing fixes the issue for THREE DAYS. Then Carbonite gets stuck in “searching files for backup” mode. Plus their tech support hours are unrealistic and unreasonable.

By: Tony

Tony — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 04:58:52 +0000

I just bought a new computer and transferred (i.e., uninstalled on old computer, installed on new computer, then “restored” files from Carbonite on new computer) all my files. All my files downloaded at an average of 1.6 Gb/hr. This just happened yesterday, but so far, I have no complaints and am very happy with the Carbonite service. It is very inexpensive for what it does, and it does it well. There is some extra work, after a restore, to be done with Outlook and iTunes files, but those are issues because of the software, not Carbonite. Still, it can be done.

So, in the final analysis, Carbonite did it’s job, I’m satisfied, and I’ll definitely recommend it to anyone.

(BTW, I did not use an external hard drive instead of Carbonite for the switch to the new computer because my old computer’s processor was so slow, it would have taken just as long, if not longer. This way, I just hit “restore” and slept on it.)

By: Carl Van Wagenen

Carl Van Wagenen — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 19:31:29 +0000

I purchased Carbonite over a year ago and I guess it was working okay, but I never needed it so don’t really know. Then my computer crashed and I got a new HP Touchsmart. I accessed Carbonite in order to load my old files onto my new computer. NOT !!!
Carbonite keeps telling me that I am using the wrong answers when I try to get to the proper site. Then they tell me that they will send me a new password and that I should past it into my browser. NOT !!!
Nothing is working. I tried to call support and waited for 45 minutes but nobody answered. I’m at a total loss as to why I joined this bogus outfit because they don’t seem to be very customer friendly.
In the event that anyone from Carbonite happens to read my comment and would like to contact me, feel free: 845-246-2865

Thanks (for nothing I guess)

By: AL1432

AL1432 — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 00:15:02 +0000

I recently had a similar situation with the “error downloading file, restart your computer” message. I called Carbonite support, which looked at my log files. Turned out, I was informed by them, that the restore was still running and had never failed…the problem in fact was with the User Interface which issues that erroneous error. They definitely need to fix the UI problem, which is very misleading, but bottom line is that the restore did work.

By: Tony

Tony — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 11:25:41 +0000

Restoring is an absolute nightmare. 3 hours into a 77gb restore, it says “error downloading file, restart your computer and try again” After several rounds of this, I decide to cancel the restore and try again. It deleted EVERYTHING it restored in the previous 3 hours! After uninstalling/ reinstalling, it completed a full restore in 5 minutes! It reconstructed all of the folders/ subfolders and called itself complete. NO DATA! They get you to pay for a subscription with easy backup, but screw you on restore. They don’t care, because they have your money!

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 04:14:19 +0000

I am currently a happy customer of Carbonite. But, I just realize that my asus notebook come with free online storage(webstorage), too. Has anyone tried it before? I wish read some reviews before activation it.