Mozy Online Backup ---> Carbonite. Any Carbonite users here I can ask questions of?
 

For many years used Mozy Online Backup. Am thus very familiar with it and how to add files/folders for backup -- as well as how to restore from a backup (which has saved me at least three times).

Months ago Mozy was acquired by Carbonite and they have been transitioning Mozy users to the new platform. Apparently it's now my turn -- the Carbonite program downloaded and is doing its thing. Mozy will stop doing its backups mid-May and any previous backup sets on Mozy will disappear mid-June.

If there are any experienced Carbonite users here, some questions (I'll probably have more):

1. Mozy includes the option to simultaneously backup to an external HDD at the time of an online backup. It's called 2XX or something like that. I cannot tell if Carbonite has a similar option for its "regular" plan.

2. In Mozy, you went into your account to configure which files/folders to backup; it appears in Carbonite that that is done via a right-click option in File Explorer But I liked Mozy's ability to see at a glance the "topography" of what was being back up and add/subtract from that global view. Is there a similar feature in Carbonite that I'm not seeing?

TIA!

Bump :)

I use Crashplan. $10/month/device.

Going to investigate Crashplan now after a completely frustrating online chat with Carbonite "support." Not only was much of what the agent had to say ungrammatical and non-understandable and failing to address my questions, it turns out to get the same level of service from Carbonite as I have been used to with Mozy would be about double the price.

Ugh.

Cblaisd, look at Backblaze. I had Crashplan until it started slowing my computer to a crawl, then quit backing up. I moved to Backblaze, which updates continuously; and I never notice it working in the background. It did the initial backup amazingly fast, especially compared with another trial I started using at the same time. (Can't remember that program at the moment.).

The price is certainly right and it includes backup to an attached drive without Carbonite's usurious charge for that.

And I'm playing with Crashplan today and really don't much like its interface at all.

One question re Backblaze: on this page
https://www.backblaze.com/best-onlin...p-service.html
it says "All User Data Backed Up By Default - No Picking And Choosing"

Does that mean I CANNOT pick and choose if I want to? (E.g., there is some stuff in my documents folder that I don't want/need backed up and I have a couple of folders of program data that live on the root C:\ drive (legacy programs that I still use that have their roots in Win 3.1). Will Backblaze allow me to add those folders to what is being backed up?

TIA!

Apparently so. But it picked up files from a couple of legacy programs I have that are not in Documents but are on the C:\ drive. I wouldn't be concerned about it backing up what you don't want it to since files are encrypted, there is no data limit, and it's fast.

I use backblaze and that's the one downside. I really want to select just a few folders for backup and nothing else, but can't.
I've considered leaving them for a provider that lets me do this, but i just haven't found a good deal yet.

Concur. I deleted CrashPlan because it backed up far too much (and its interface is terrible); am trying Backblaze whose interface is a bit more helpful and it did back up less junk (but still picked up the legacy programs in C:\) ; unfortunately given Carbonite's attitudes about customer service its interface (tied to Windows Explorer) is the easiest to use for fine-tuning one's selections.

I tried Carbonite years ago, and it hogged my system, slowing it considerably. Also a friend, who had it for years, needed to restore a document file but it was missing. For some weird reason it never got backed up.

Obviously, no program is perfect.

Backblaze is part of those backup services that go with the 'opt out' approach, whereby it backs up most things by default, but makes it incredibly easy to choose folders to ignore. I've been using them for years after switching from Crashplan (whose software I found to be horrible). Never notice it (in a good way), fair pricing, and restoring has been easy that couple of times I needed to.

If you want to customize what you backup as well as save some money if you have a lot of data, I highly recommend using Backblaze B2 instead. I use Arq backup (https://www.arqbackup.com/) and I pay about $3/month to backup my computer.

On my home network, I use Syncback (free) to auto sync all my stuff to a NAS once a week.

Cloud: I use OneDrive. I think O365 users get 1TB of storage for free. I even have it setup for "versioning" of my files. Microsoft is one of a very few companies I would trust to keep my data safe. Always some risk with a cloud option but MS has a pretty good track record thus far. They cannot afford not to.

Nice! Essentially a more automated version of XCOPY. Perfect for me to backup my various drives to my NAS.