Outdoorsafe Loc: Colorado Springs

Does anyone have any experience using Carbonite for backup storage. I have about terabytes of images stored on a Drobo and need to back it up.

farmer64 Loc: Clovis, NM

I use Carbonite and had a computer crash. I got everything back after getting the computer back on line. Not one photo missing.

diannarucker Loc: Iowa

what carbonate company do you suggest or know about

anotherview Loc: California

Yes. I had about 2 TB of pictures to back up and tried Carbonite. A month (yes, a MONTH) later the back-up had not finished.

So I terminated the service.

I use two external hard drives to back up my pictures and documents using SyncToy from Microsoft.

You might consider using an external hard drive that you periodically back up to. Then you could store this backup drive offsite somewhere, like in a safe deposit box or at an office.

How do you like Drobo? I've considered it for backup.

Good luck.

sbesaw Loc: Boston

Been using it for years and very satisfied, also have 2 local drives I use as well, 2 G Drives, one is a clone of my iMac and the other is just files, photo's and documents. Also just loaded a trial of Mylio. www.mylio.com Check it out, cool stuff. Their tag line "The next generation photo management system is here.
All of your photos. All of your devices. Always protected."

edit " I initially backed up about 1 TB Data using Xfinity Internet service and it took a while but once that was done incremental backups are quick and reliable. I had a HD go after a replacement and was able to recover all my files. I like the security and convenience of multiple copies both on site and at a secure remote location"

sbesaw Loc: Boston

Carbonite is the company www.carbonite.com

Generically it would be referred to as "in the cloud back-up or storage". lots of folks offer that. Google, MS, Apple, SmugMug, Flickr, etc, etc, but I use and the OP was referring to the specific company, Carbonite.

Skip

glgracephoto Loc: Arlington, WA

I was recently looking at photo websites for selling, and found one that does allow storing of RAW files as well as JPEGS, Zenfolio's higher plans plans allowed for RAW file storage, 2 GB free and after that 8.5 Cents per GB a month.

http://secure.zenfolio.com/zf/signup/plans.aspx

http://www.zenfolio.com/zf/news/14-05-02a

Mr PC Loc: Austin, TX

I use Carbonite and have about 700GB out there, much of which is RAW files. And yes, it took nearly a month to get my stuff all into the cloud. I'm a computer consultant and use external hard drives as well. The cloud backup is a belt and suspenders extra level of security for my stuff in case a fire, tornado or other natural disaster wipes out my whole location. Most folks don't realize their upload speeds are much slower than their download speeds. All services take quite a while to do your initial backup, since they don't want to use 100% of your outbound bandwidth. I just let my main computer run around the clock as much as possible until the initial backup completed. Once your backup is complete, Carbonite only has to keep up with new items, modified items or deleted items. One other benefit of Carbonite is it has a rolling 30-day version of all your files, so you can go back in time up to 30-days on any or all of your files, helpful if one of the newer viruses encrypts your entire hard drive as has happened to some of my clients. With major amounts of data, you can pay Carbonite to ship you an external hard drive with your backup on it in an emergency, in case downloading is not fast enough for you. Or, you can prioritize what you want restored first and wait for the rest to dribble in. Hope this sheds some light.

Nikonian72 Loc: Chico CA

I have an external 2Gb hard drive backing my PC, as well as Carbonite. Initially, it does take an exceedingly long time to upload an entire storage unit to the "cloud", no matter which service you choose. But daily uploads are quite time manageable.

revhen Loc: By the beautiful Hudson

Carbonite saved my skin when my old XP computer finally bit the dust. Also pleased to learn that they will ship you an external hard drive if you have a huge amount to download. Dell also offers a cloud backup.

scovarnyc

Check out Crashplan. Much more cost effective.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

Take out your crystal ball. Not all these services will be around in a few years. If they are not, what happens to your files? Remember, once you sign up with one service, you are pretty much married to them because you will not want to upload files again.

I have only a 1 T hdd and still needed six months for Carbonite to get what I wanted. My other advice is to select only your most important data for storage and once done, do the rest. Or find someone faster than Carbonite. It is ridiculously slow.

MikeMck Loc: Southern Maryland on the Bay

[quote=anotherview]Yes. I had about 2 TB of pictures to back up and tried Carbonite. A month (yes, a MONTH) later the back-up had not finished.

So I terminated the service.

I had a similar experience

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I'm not a fan of cloud storage for three reasons:
(1) bandwidth required
(2) cost
(3) it requires you to trust someone else for your file safety.

I have about 1.2 TBytes of images and another half TByte of other stuff on my computer. It would take me a long time to send that to the cloud and another long time to restore it. A local external hard drive would take care of it in a few hours. Without tying up my internet connection.

For the annual cost of the cloud service I could update my local external hard drives every year or two.

Keeping my files locally is important to me. They're under my control. I'm not depending on someone else to maintain my files for me.

I keep my files on three external hard drives. One on my desk. One elsewhere in the house. And one a mile away in the barn at my farm. They get rotated occasionally so they all have the same files on them.

I have never had an external hard drive fail in the 15 years or more that I've been using them. That gives me confidence that I won't have three of them fail at the same time.

Really, the biggest problem with backups is the file names, particularly on images. I have a lot of old stuff with 8.3 file names. Most of those files are pretty hard to tell whether or not they're really useful without opening them and looking (assuming they're compatible with current software).

When it comes to backup you can't be too paranoid.

Mr PC Loc: Austin, TX

If it's that slow, I would go to www.speakeasy.net and do a test on your upload and download speeds. There are also settings in Carbonite to give it permission to use more of your upload bandwidth to hasten things. In my experience with over 4,000 clients, there is not much difference between any of the cloud services in doing your first, full blast backup and the big differences that do appear are usually the result of a poor Internet connection. Also, I believe they have the ability to accept an external drive from you to perform an immediate initial backup from, eliminating the lengthy upload process common with large data sets these days. I guess I'm just saying it's inherent in the technology.