Flametoad

At the end of the year, I subscribed to an online service called Carbonite. This watches folders that you designate and uploads files from them to Carbonite’s secure servers. The files are encrypted, and only you can access them. (Supposedly.) I took this step because I realized I have over 50 gigabytes of data and backing things up to DVD was no longer practical. I could (and probably should) have an external drive to back up files, but if I were ever burglarized or the house burned then I’d still lose everything. Carbonite seemed like a pretty good idea.

A little over a week ago, I discovered that my hard drive was filling up. Thankfully, I couldn’t tell with what. All I could tell was that I was downloading something like crazy, but it wasn’t visible in windows. I went over my firewall settings and tried two or three different virus scan software packages, but all to no avail. Rather than let it continue to beat my head against the wall, I decided to repartitian my part drive and reinstall Windows. Without Carbonite as a security blanket, I probably would have struggled for another day or two before coming around to the same conclusion.

I wiped my drive, re-installed Vista and several software packages, then started up the Carbonite restoration process mid-week last week. Things seemed to start off pretty well. I didn’t expect it to restore the 56GB of family photos, music, Quicken files, and 12 to Midnight layout work overnight. When I got up the next morning, it had only done 2%. I also saw that Vista had downloaded a new security patch and needed to reboot the computer. Being much more paranoid about staying up with patches, I rebooted and left for work. When I returned that afternoon … it was still at 2%. Apparently Carbonite hadn’t resumed the downloads after the computer had rebooted.

To make a long story shorter, Carbonite technical support reassured me that their software was *supposed* to resume downloads after rebooting the computer, but since it hadn’t the only way to get it going again was to reinstall it. I grumbled, but did it, and it did indeed resume my download. This worked for another couple days, until my antivirus  software updated with something that required a reboot. Again, security trumps files, so I rebooted and Carbonite again failed to resume downloading. At least this time I knew what to do, and fortunately it worked a second time. Reinstalling the software got it to resume downloads. Still, I don’t understand why:

1. The software can’t properly resume downloads like it’s supposed to. That seems like an elementary function.
2. There’s no button for manually resuming downloads. Surely there are times when you’d want to pause file downloads, then resume them.

At this point I have all my 12 to Midnight files, family photos, and Quicken data. I’m working on music. I’m still glad I had Carbonite, because I would have been in a world of hurt without it. I’m also pretty pissed at the quality of their software. If you search for “Carbonite restore problems”, you’ll find plenty of other people in worse condition than me. At least I’m actually able to get my files. I used the online chat function to talk to their technical support. That turned out to be the smart thing to do. I read horror stories of people being on hold for 2 hours or more.

My subscription was for a full year of service, so I’ll probably keep on using Carbonite for the remainder of 2009. I’ll also be keeping a close eye on their software updates. I think they have a great idea, and I’m very thankful that I signed up 3 months ago. Problems aside, I am getting all my files back. I sincerely hope that they get their act together and work out these kinks, pronto. If, despite my problems, you want to give Carbonite a try, just let me know. They have a “refer a friend” thing where we both get extra months of service. It’s better than a poke in the eye.