Carbonite

They bought Mozy, a reputable cloud backup service, then trashed the service; but charged more. It slows the computer drastically, on programs that have nothing to do with backing up. Try to cancel? Good Luck. There is no way to directly email or call them. No matter where you search on their "service" links, it a circular in responsive system. Then try to get a refund. I suggest filling a complaint with the BBB, and your States Attorney General.

Backup is simple and automatic. Want to restore? Good Luck! You can only restore 10G at a time and at a very slow rate. Need to restore the whole backup? Depending on the amount of data, as much as a month when your computer is unavailable to use. Support is horrible. They interrupt and don't listen. I had to repeat my email address 9 times because of that. You can expedite the restore with a hideously expensive service where they send you a disc. Wait time is high. I used the call back and they called but did not connect so I had to call back and wait. And further, if you do restore? You can't choose the date of the backup to restore. If you just select folders it can take as much as a year to get what you need because of the 10G backup limitation. USELESS Service that creates more problems than it solves.

I have 2 Mac's in the house. It took 3 months but I finally resolved the backup problem with one of them. Now the other one refuses to back up. I've gone thru their directions, and it backed up on time in a month. They want to have a remote session where they will take control of my computer--I don't think so. Requested a partial refund, got an emphatic no, we don't do that. Unfortunately I'm just going to have to bit the bullet and totally get rid of this so called back up. It just doesn't like and IOS operating system. Just get an external drive and use Time Machine, it does the same thing. And if you want a cloud based back up, use ICloud--you know that will work with a MAC.

It's December 2, and Carbonite still uses Covid as an excuse for absolutely TERRIBLE customer service. Yesterday, the wait time was 55 minutes, left a call-back #, no one ever called back. I have a priority case because my entire back-up was erased from the Carbonite system. I pre-paid a full year, so it's not for a lack of $$. I'm now on hold a second day. Was transferred over to as a priority. Been on hold now for42 minutes. I'm cancelling. This company is the WORST!

I have been a Carbonite customer for 7 years. Every year my bill got automatically deducted from a credit card I had on file with them. During my last billing cycle they claim to have notified me that my credit card had expired, and as a result permanently terminated my account with my 33,000 files! I couldn't believe it when they told me this. When I asked them if they could resend their warning emails so I could see them with my own eyes, they said I'd have to take it up legally with their marketing department. I have never been so disappointed and dissatisfied as a customer in my entire life. The entire reason this business exists is to help people feel safe and secure about their information. They were completely resigned to the fact that there was nothing they could do to help me recover my files. They took my money for 7 years and I lost all my files. This should never happen to anyone. I'm in shock that they were so unhelpful!

So I had Carbonite on my machine last year, and it appeared to work OK, until I realized a couple of weeks ago that it had stopped working. Reason? - the subscription had run out. No problem, re-subscribed, downloaded a fresh version of the program, installed it - and that's when the problems started. To cut a long story short, every time the program started, a succession of four error popups in a row would appear, saying basically that "Internet. Explorer. Application could not be found". Uninstall and re-install did not clear the errors.

Now, once the popups had been dismissed, the program WOULD work, but the point is that, if one wishes to have Carbonite start in background mode when the machine boots, it ain't going to do so, due to these multiple errors preventing it from starting automatically. Got on to the Carbonite chat, described the situation in detail, and the chat guy said he had the EXACT solution to my problem. His solution? Re-install the program. Which I did, and nothing changed.

Got back on to the Carbonite chat and again described the situation up to that point. I asked why should the program try to start up Internet Explorer (which is installed, BTW). The tech's response? 'Coz that's how the programmers wrote the program - it actually NEEDS IE in order to function! I said I wasn't interested in a product that was so shoddily programmed, nor with a product where such weak dependencies on other software are necessary, and where such dependencies are nowhere to be found in the product docs.

I asked for a refund, and am still waiting two weeks later, despite numerous follow-ups and demands for the refund. If the comments here are anything to go by, no refund will be winging my way any time before the 30-day cut-off date, beyond which no refunds are possible.

So, the program can only just about be made to work on this Win10 64-bit, i7-7700K 4.2GHz CPU machine, if one is prepared to put up with the numerous error popups, and ONLY if one of the worst-ever browsers in history is also installed.

***** Avoid this product and this company like the plague! *****

Years subscribed to Carbonite and the very first time I needed was useless. I need to order a hard drive containing my files to be delivered but no one told me that I needed to return before a deadline or be charged $147. Carbonite assures that they sent a email warning me about this but I never got that email. They never warned me on the phone either. The only warning was in the box containing the hard drive that I opened when back in town a month after the deadline passes. I called and they say they will never return the charge. Useless.

I have been using Carbonite for several years. From time to time, I get an email telling me that there are vast numbers of files backed up. I had never received a notice about any problems.

If you've used Carbonite, you know that there's an icon to indicate when a backup is pending. I've noticed many files "pending". But hey, there were lots of green icons for "backed up".

Anyhow, one day, Windows notified me that my hard drive was dying. "No problem" I thought. I'll just log into my Carbonite account and download onto a new hard drive. This is when the surprises began.

It turns out, there were tens of thousands of files "pending"--including several years of family photos. I called tech support. First, they told me it was bandwidth. After this was ruled out, they changed the story. According to tech support, my account only backs up the C: drive.

So, if you happen to use an SSD for program files and a standard HD for data, guess what? None of your data will be backed up.

I asked why the files showed as "pending" if they were never going to be backed up. Apparently, my software was out of date. But, I had never been asked or told to update it.

Curiously, the FAQ page on the Carbonite sales page says the most basic account will back up "all the files on one PC" (see attachment). When challenged on this point, tech support sent me to a link somewhere else on the site that states otherwise (see attachment).

I don't want to suggest that you can't back up your files with Carbonite. But if you do, you'd better keep a really close eye on them, forever. (I did keep a close eye on mine in the beginning. But, it seemed like a waste of time after a while.) For me, this defeats the purpose of a "set it and forget it" backup. And, I can't help but feel mislead by the website.

Issues
Backup so slow that number of files increases, 10 days ago I had 12,000 files to backup, now it is 17,000 and this is without adding files, just normal photo editing, using Lightroom.

Tech support blame your computer or bandwidth, no help advice on what may help speed the backup. Despite him seeing that I have 18M upload speed we spent 45 mins arguing about whether it was working or not and final comment was that I should just wait for it to complete. Couldn't seem to grasp that if the number of files just increased, that was never going to happen.

Backup Process. Follow on issue with slow backup is that backups work in alphabetical order, according to tech support. So if you backup C: User\Appdata and the backup is so slow that Appdata is changing, as you work. These updated files will be added to the backup ahead of any files further down the list, so photos\music\videos will NEVER be backed up. They could have been sitting there for days\weeks and will not be backed up.

Continuous backup doesnt work. In STATUS it will tell you that all your files are safe and its been idle for 45 mins, but look in Settings and it will say x thousand files pending backup. So its lying about the files being safe and despite having thousands of files to backup, is doing nothing.

Backup Now in settings there is a button saying Backup Now. Press that and you think it will immediately get to work on all the waiting files. No, minutes after doing this it is still on Idle, or it won't start at all.

I downloaded a trial of iDrive after 5 days of this issue, in the next 5 days it backed up 600Gb of data over the same internet connection, from the same computer. According to Carbonite though its an issue at my end...

Tried to check my backup files on Carbonite website - got a message saying they were not available and I should try later. Does not inspire confidence in the Always Available Anywhere slogan.

I removed thousands of files from Carbonite backup list to get the number down and it is now backing up at a reasonable speed.

Very frustrating experience with this product, does NOT do what it says - in over 7 months less than 1 TB of data was backed up, this is INSANELY SLOW, you will never have all your files backed up therefor Carbonite is RIPPING YOU OFF. Carbonite will AUTOMATICALLY DELETE your files in 30 days if you do not continue plugging you external hard drive into a computer - this is a waste of my money since I need to make sure my files are backed up NO MATTER WHAT. When I tried to explain my dissatisfaction with the product and request a refund they wasted my time twice asking to "fix" it. Josh told me that he couldn't give me a refund and all the managers had stepped into a meeting. When I told him I was recording the call he said 2 managers might be available and put me on hold. Brandon who is the "Consumer Manager" came on the line and was not listening to anything I said but repeating the same few lines back to me like a robot. "Sorry because this is outside of the 30 days return policy I can't give a you a refund but we can try to fix it." He wouldn't give me his last name or an email address when I asked for one. He said that Anna the "Group Manager" will have to give me a call back. COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY. I purchased BACKBLAZE which I highly recommend as a QUICK EASY SEAMLESS SOLUTION THAT WORKS ALL OF WHICH CARBONITE IS NOT! DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY. TERRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE, I JUST WANT A REFUND FOR A PRODUCT THAT DID NOT WORK FOR ME. I asked for the CEOs name and was told it was Mohammed Ali. Mr. Ali if you're reading this, please train you customer service people to ACTUALLY LISTEN to the customer and offer a REAL SOLUTION

After the trail not work the way the trial did. Support team just wanted me to delete the software and reload another copy. It never worked again and I was told my 30 days was over so I could not get a refund. You must need the hundred $ more then I do. I will make sure as many people as I cab reach will be safe the problem of doing business a their rate company.

Carbonite recently lost 950,000 files (yep almost a terabyte). I caught it in time, but after 7 months of back and forth about where the files where, they finally admitted they deleted per their 30 day policy - this was after being assured by two techs that my files would be put back into the proper folders. I lost 15 years of work, and about 2 days arguing with the company. This is after spending roughy $1,000 for backups. At the end I asked that they ship me a disk copy of my remaining files, for which the charged me $280 dollars. Talk about insult to injury. In addition to all this there system is clunky, slow and is almost impossible to get your information from - it is pretty much a repository and even that doesn't work sometimes. Stay away from them, there are faster, cheaper, more flexible options out there that don't just delete 950,000 files.

After 5 years of paying Carbonite dues, I finally needed to access the files due to a computer failure. I was asked to do a password reset and subsequently asked security questions to which the service refused my answers. I called on tech support to help but it was like talking to a wall. I have since paid for someone to pull my files off the hard drive and I can now keep them on flash drive or google drive where they are always available to me. What this means is I have been paying for nothing for the past five years. To date, Carbonite still has not given me access to my own files.

Would not recommend. The list of downloaded pages is very difficult to navigate. There does not seem to be any rhyme or reason in how the files are listed. If you know the name of the file you are OK, because you can do a search. It may have downloaded all the necessary files. It is hard to tell. The worse is when I did not renew, I am being harassed to renew. A flashing notice comes up and can't be deleted because it does not stand still long enough. It has been several days and I am still getting the very annoying and intrusive notices. For this reason alone I would not get Carbonite back-up again.