Categories
Blog Archives
Does Carbonite's unlimited backup storage include data on other drives?
April 20th, 2009 - Posted by Caitlin
The following post in our Reader Question series is an actual user submitted question. To maintain the integrity of the original question, we do not edit or change reader questions in any way.
Q: Does Carbonite's unlimited backup storage include data on other drives (D, E, etc., which are either internal or external) in addition to the C drive?
A: By default, Carbonite backs up everything in your Documents and Settings folder, as well as all of your music. The default backup does not include programs, system files, temporary files, videos, or individual files greater than 4GB. You can manually add any of these, from any internal hard drive, to your Carbonite backup. Carbonite does not guarantee support for external hard drives, and we have heard conflicting reports as to whether or not it is possible to successfully back up an external hard drive with Carbonite.
Mozy, another of the online backup services reviewed on NextAdvisor.com, does back up external hard drives.
To learn more about Carbonite, Mozy, and other online backup services, see our reviews and comparison chart.
41 Responses to “Does Carbonite's unlimited backup storage include data on other drives?”
Leave a Reply
Popular Services Reviewed:
Credit Monitoring Services |
Find Us On:
Copyright© 2006 - 2012 NextAdvisor.com - All rights reserved.
Disclosure: NextAdvisor.com is a consumer information site that offers free, independent reviews and ratings of online services. We receive advertising revenue from most of the services we review. Our editors thoroughly research and whenever possible test each service we review and offer their honest opinions about each one. We are independently owned and operated and all opinions expressed on this site are our own.
April 25th, 2009 at 8:41 am
I beg to differ with your response to Caitlin's post of 2009-04-20, regarding Carbonite backup of external hard drives.
Carbonite will only back up *internal* (IDE or SATA) hard drives. I have an external USB hard drive, and Carbonite won't back up anything that's on it.
May 3rd, 2009 at 7:34 am
I agree with Jimmy. I did a Carbonite trial and was disappointed that the progam would not backup my external hard drive. I emailed Carbonite and was told at this time they do not support external drives.
May 15th, 2009 at 7:21 am
Alex: That’s correct, we don’t back up external drives. The problem is that external drives are not always connected to your computer. Carbonite is a backup service, not archiving. People who do archiving charge by the GB, not unlimited. When you delete data from your PC, it gets deleted from the backup. When you unplug your external hard drive, are we to assume that you no longer want that data and is it ok for us to delete it? If not, how long are we supposed to keep it? If the answer is “forever,” then it turns us into an archiving service. In a few months we will have a version of Carbonite that will back up external drives and network drives, but it won’t be unlimited for a fixed price.
Dave Friend, CEO
Carbonite, Inc.
David Friend | Chairman & CEO
Carbonite, Inc.
334 Boylston St., Boston, MA 02116
617-587-1110
July 13th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
David, you made this statement:
"When you delete data from your PC, it gets deleted from the backup."
Am I missing something? Isnt that what data back-up is supposed to protect against? If I accidentally delete data or if a drive dies, would Carbonite assume I purposefully deleted it?
I understand not backing up network drives as it opens you to be backing up entire office networks, but the statements above are a little concerning.
July 17th, 2009 at 8:51 am
David, I understand your general argument against archiving, and I fully understand that your system could be flooded by users with large server farms who try to back up everything for a (low) fixed fee. However, I recently bought a 1 TB drive to add to my system, as a "local" backup drive, and your "rules" seem to say that if I had bought an internal drive, Carbonite would back it up, but because I chose to buy a USB drive, Carbonite will not. Clearly, this makes little sense.
It seems to me that you would be better to distinguish "archiving" from "backup" by function, not by drive configuration. It seems like this should mean that backed up files should "disappear" from the Carbonite servers, within a certain time (a week? a month?) after they disappear from the local drives. This is what Mozy does, although I find that their system is still very buggy.
What I do is use the 1 TB drive as a LOCAL BACKUP, which is done incrementally every night. What I want to use the unlimited Carbonite (or Mozy) for is to create an off-site backup of the "LOCAL BACKUP drive", not my "used all the time drive". If disaster happened to my "LOCAL BACK drive", and I had a fixed time period (a week? a month?) to restore IT from the off-site service, that would be more than enough. My real purpose in having off-site backup is to protect myself against a fire or other home disaster when I am away. My local backup takes care of inadvertent deletions and hard-disk failures.
As to Dalton's comment of July 13, 2009, I kniow that Carbonite keeps the files after they disappear from the local drive. Dalton, if you look at the info on the Carbonite virtual drive, you will see that such files remain there, but are flagged with a message to the effect that "the original file has been deleted". I try to clean up my Carbonite virtual drive by deleting those files, although I confess that I am not as dilligent as I could be!
August 28th, 2009 at 3:27 am
David, I'm glad you're reading and responding here. I tried Carbonite, and have two 'stoppers' for me – the first is the issue here with external drives. I'm backing up to a drobo (*great* product!) so I'm pretty solidly covered for drive failures locally. But not for fire/theft/drobo-failure. So I want to back up my on-drobo files to online backup. Alas, drobo is an external drive…
The other stopper is even more important to me: I have to specify each kind of file to back up. Oh, *horrors*!! What if I miss one, or some new product I install uses some new file extension and I forget to add it to the backups? I want to backup *everything* by default so I don't miss anything! Let me *remove* things from the backup (and it'd be fine for the installer to ask if I really want to back up *.tmp, ~*, *.bak, etc)
Before anyone argues you'd have a million copies of Windows XP/Vista/7 backed up, if you've done the data storage right (uh, in my rather arrogant opinion of 'right'…
you'd only have one copy of each file, and a million *references* to that one copy.
I'll throw another drive internally and image the drobo onto it to satisfy the internal-only issue, but *please* let me set Carbonite to just plain back up everything!
I really wanted to use Carbonite because you're local (I'm in Needham) but the risk of missing some obscure – but important – file because it's got some odd extension is just too much for me.
December 25th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
I don't know if this comment thread is still alive, but Jeff has echoed my exact sentiments in his July 17th post above. I just bought a 1 Tera SATA drive yesterday to set up just this sort of arrangement. I plan on handling backups from 3 machines locally to this single drive and then just pushing a copy of that off site. So what I'm wondering is, Jeff, what service did you ultimately use for your solution? And how is it working for you?
February 10th, 2010 at 10:39 am
Sorry David R, I have been so busy, I haven't followed up on this thread lately.
Since my last post, I switched to "Mozy Home" and dropped Carbonite. Mozy has the best structure for me in that it backs up my external drive, and "purges" files on a regular basis. The price per year is comparable to Carbonite.
Unfortunately, Mozy is full of bugs, and their "chat-only" help is too slow, and not very competent. They tend not to listen to the details I supply, and throw a bunch of "generic" solutions (e.g. reboot, reinstall, take two asprin and call me in the morning!). I have struggled to get the system working repeatedly, comsuming whole days of time, but it continues to fail sporadically – not an encouraging sign for the future. They can't seem to handle large files such as those that occur with a zipped full backup. I know it should take days to transfer such a file, but with their current system, it fails to move anything.
I just bought a new PC with a 1 TB internal drive, and am using my 1 TB USB drive as a local backup, so I just decided to dump Mozy and go back to Carbonite. I will back-up the other computers on my network to both the internal and external drives on my "primary" system, since the data sets there are relatively small. That way, Carbonite will cover everything, hopefully with no further problems.
For local backup I have been using Geniesoft, but their off-site storage is way too expensive. Their integration is a great idea though.
February 24th, 2010 at 12:56 pm
The lack of support for external drives will cause me to cancel my just-acquired Carbonite service.
I, too, bought an external drive of 500GB, and I moved the Users directory, and most applications and "My Document" folders directly to it.
It is not inside the machine, but it is virtually a required part of my computer. I DON'T remove it when the computer is on, which is almost 24/7.
March 18th, 2010 at 9:39 pm
I just subscribed to Carbonite and paid the annual fee. Now I realize I can not backup my data, because they are located on different drive. I am an advanced computer user and do not keep my data on system drive, because that would not be smart. Now reading from the postings above. Looks like I have to call Carbonite and cancel my subscription if the service is not able to backup data on different drive. I just email their tech support. Crossing my finger for descent response.
-Sean T.
March 23rd, 2010 at 11:59 am
An easy solution to the above problem with external drive not being backed-up, just install Windows on the External drive then you can use to backup any of the file with Carbonite.
Excellent product with excellent support
March 23rd, 2010 at 12:01 pm
I understand your comment that it is not smart to put system and data on the same drive, but if it is backed-up you can restore easily.
April 10th, 2010 at 11:25 am
I just subscribed to Carbonite; however, I would not have done so if I had known that you do not backup external hard drives. I can't believe that I had to find out the hard way and that Carbonite did not warn me. As you well know, people that buy a product like Carbonite tend to have a lot of music and other files worth protecting on external drives. To not protect data from external drives is a major flaw and huge blow to Carbonite's overall utility. I would like my money back and my subscription cancelled. For the price of Carbonite, I could have bought a 1TB external storage backup for my existing external drive and been perfectly happy. I hope this note makes its way to Carbonite's management. If I get my money back — some harm and some foul from what I believe is deceptive promotion by Carbonite — If I don't, I will be a mouse that roars. I hope everyone out there understands that Carbonite does not back up data on external drives.
April 12th, 2010 at 12:27 pm
I subscribed to Carbonite a month ago and now I learn I can't backup all the family pictures on my external drive? What is that about? I also would like my money back and my subscription cancelled please.
April 30th, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Look at the date where Carbonite CEo said they would soon allow USB drivess to be backed up. Still not doing it. Just downloaded the newest version. I use USB because my system is too old to use the new S-ATA drives. Pfff.
May 27th, 2010 at 9:43 am
I think some people are missing the point of this service. I am a new customer of Carbonite and I will admit that I was dissapointed at first that they didn't back up external hard drives. Primarily because I have a Drobo for just about all my files.
However, for people that don't own a Drobo or some sort of RAID set up this Carbonite service can replace the need for such a device at home.
So, what I have done is taken another look at how I am storing my data and how Carbonite can make things easier for me.
I am now storing all my data(Except for Large Videos) on my two internal hard drives. I let Carbonite back up all that data for me automatically. Now I never have to worry about a fire or theft of the drobo in regards to those files.
I now only use my Drobo to store ripped DVD and BluRay discs along with other Video files that would just take way too much space on my internal drives.
I really like this new set up and if I could go back in time I might not have purchased the Drobo. It's a great device but now all I'm getting out of it is the benefit of being able to upgrade the capacity on the fly without matching the existing drives inside.
I now only use my external drives as a way to quickly move a bunch of files to computers that are not on my home network.
So, Before you right off a service like this because it doesn't back up your external hard drives take a look at your set up and see if your use of external hard drives is the best solution.
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:41 am
Well, I too have seen the light. Carbonite customer service says they will forward my request for a refund internally. It would have been nice to clearly understand an external hard drive could not be backed up. Furthermore, if you delete space for more room, they dump the files too. Has anyone gotten a refund?
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:43 am
Well, I too have seen the light. Carbonite customer service says they will forward my request for a refund internally. It would have been nice to clearly understand an external hard drive could not be backed up. Furthermore, if you delete space for more room, they dump the files too. Has anyone gotten a refund? Let's hope their desire for business is pure.
August 14th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
Same here. I purchased a whole year's license only to find out that I can't access any of the files on my external drives. What's with the promise of unlimited storage and no warning that I can't back up external files? How could it be unlimited if there is no such thing as an unlimited size internal drive? I feel hoodwinked.
September 1st, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Mount the drive to a local folder. That'll allow backing up of the external drive.
September 13th, 2010 at 8:19 am
This may be a stupid question, but how do you mount the drive to a local folder. Do you just drag and drop the drive into the folder?
September 15th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Tom, it's not a stupid question at all. Instructions are here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307889
October 7th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
If you have a Seagate external hard drive it comes with a Carbonite installation file 'CarboniteSetupLitePreInstaller' which is specific to backing up this type of device. I tried out the free 30 day trial and successfully backed up my Seagate external drive. Even if I disconnect the external drive and reconnect it monitors the folders previously backed up and updates the backup with any changes. The trial proved everything i had was looking for so now I have just purchased a 1 year subscription.
November 14th, 2010 at 11:11 pm
Interesting. Thank you for sharing!
December 27th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Hello, just dropping by to say Happy Holidays!
If you want to back up your external drives, you should be able to add them in the configuration software.
January 20th, 2011 at 5:12 pm
About the External Drives not backing up, I have paid for the service as well very happ with it until I found I can not back it up, I do not disconnect mine. So I went around it. If you create an NTFS folder on a partition of in internal drive you can use Windows Mount Points to basically redirect from a folder to the external drive. Carbonite will now back up.
January 20th, 2011 at 5:40 pm
I tried the NTFS folder workaround and Carbonite says the drive is a system folder that it won't back up and won't let me specify that it back it up. Any suggestions?
January 21st, 2011 at 10:17 am
Hey Kevin,
That's interesting. We have not tried that, but it's good to hear that it works for you.
February 5th, 2011 at 10:17 am
Carbonite doesn’t work. It fails to backup normal Office files downloaded from Outlook 2007 claiming they are “temporary files”. They are not. They refuse to respond to my many requests for resolution to this issue. “Never Worry About Your Backup Again” is an outright lie. You will lose files. It’s too bad about their attitude, too. If they were willing to own it, I’d let them work it out, but they just don’t seem to care.
March 1st, 2011 at 7:21 pm
I have the Carbonite system, but I am not very sharp with internal workings of a computer
The site states Restor Files
View status of files being restord?
Unfreeze Carbonite and resume your
backing?
I have no idea what I should do, I have a large Family Tree in my system and have over 10,000 names and as I read all the 29 comments it looks as though Carbonite does not store this system.
Really stupid???? sorry for being confused.
March 23rd, 2011 at 3:02 pm
Does anyone know if Carbonite throttles your bandwidth when you hit a backup "limit." I switched to a new computer with only a c: drive so everything on d: drive had to go to c:. Last month my backup were doing about 6 GB per day for 15 days. Then, my upload dropped to about 2 GB per day. It has also remaind there for this month so far. It's not my ISP and I have held off on reloading all my software so my backup could catch up so there is plenty of free RAM and processor.
April 7th, 2011 at 9:51 am
To all the people on here wondering why Carbonite doesn't backup external drives on their basic plans is because they can't make money backing up 1TB of data for $54 per yr.
By keeping it internal only they drastically lower the amount of data they are storing. The Pro version will take care of you.
I don't want even one comment about how a 1TB drive costs $50 so how can't they make money. I'll give you the answer since we run a high level data center.
1) Bandwith Costs – the costs Carbonite must pay for you to be able to transfer your data to them. This is a huge cost for a business.
2) Cost of the data center – guys/girls your data is not stored on $50 drives, they are probably stored in SAN's with multiple copies and drives for redundancy. Also power, cooling, are a big cost of data centers as well
3) Staff for support, sales, marketing etc.
$54 per yr is a CHEAP amount to pay for what they offer, and everyone complaining just doesn't get it.
CHEAP ASSES!
June 23rd, 2011 at 10:40 am
I do understand carbonite not allowing ext HD's, but to put in their ad as unlimited storage is very misleading. Marketing tactics not good. I wish they will offer a seperate fee for storage of ext hard drives. I have a macbook pro and it has 320 gig HD. I only have 50 gig of free space left. My pics, videos and documents are all in ext hard drives. Most of the 270 gig space are allocated for my applications and software which I don't need to back up.I have 100 gig of pics stored since 1998 which I want to be backed up. I dont want to uninstall most of my applications just to free up my hard drive and then use carbonite
September 11th, 2011 at 5:44 pm
I have a method that makes backing up data stored on a USB drive possible with carbonite.
I've tried it and got i to work to backup a little over 8 TB for a customer of mine until they switched to Microsoft DPM for on-site and off-site backup. I could post this here but I'can't because it really works better if I had screenshots and as you can see here I am not able to include any screenshots of images at all.
Thanks
September 29th, 2011 at 3:42 am
Good day I am so thrilled I stubled onto your site, I really found you by accident, whilst I was researching on Google for something different, Nevertheless I am right here now and would definitely love to thank you quite a lot for a excellent article and a over-all fascinating site (I should say also love the theme/design), I don’t have enough time to see it all at the minute, however I’ve book-marked it and even added your current RSS feeds, so when I’ve got time I will be back to read a lot more, Please do keep on this brilliant job.
October 18th, 2011 at 1:57 am
How I Cured My Acne Condition in 3 days book, a step by step program showing you proven home remedy and natural acne treatment to cure pimples,zits,acne …
October 21st, 2011 at 8:20 am
dear mj almassud please email me and let me know how i can get your screen shots.
October 21st, 2011 at 8:26 am
i too, just got aone year subscription to carbonite, thinkng that their statement as to unlimited backup would include my external drives.
it does not, and i have spent a lot of time gathering music (lots of it is international, etc that resides on my external drives. those drives are always open when i am on my pc.
i , too bought a 15 tb external from seagate for the purpose of backing up all my data.
would i lose the backup on my 1,5 tb external if my c drive crashed??
October 31st, 2011 at 12:18 pm
I am not truly sure if finest procedures have emerged around things like that, but I am sure that your terrific job is clearly identified. I was thinking if you offer any subscription to your RSS feeds as I would be very interested but i can't find any link to join here.Where is it?
November 24th, 2011 at 7:40 pm
Whoa! I've solved all of the issues (for me anyway) and LOVE Carbonite. I have Raid 0 on my main computer where most of my files are stored. To boot, I have computers for 3 kids and my personal laptop. All of these synchronize to a "sever" I have in my basement. The server is a simple, XP Pro, 2-drive configuration. The OS (and some miscellaneous programs) is on one, internal drive with a second internal drive for all the files from all 5 computers. Carbonite is installed on the server and backs up perfectly. It's an awesome redndancy set-up for me personally because I'm protected from several different hardware failures on 2 different machines and I have the off-site backup with Carbonite. I couldn't be more happy with the performance or the functionality.
January 8th, 2012 at 6:55 pm
Bang On chubby fella