Carbonite

After hearing ads for it for about a year, I signed up for Carbonite - which is a web based back up service. For $55 per year you get (according to their ad) simple, secure, unlimited and automatic back-up.   In the three months I have had the service it has not lived up to its ads.

I have a big desktop machine at home that has 2 Terabytes of hard disk space.  (Admittedly, all that is not filled.)  I began the back up in mid-december.  Based on my own tests of speed, a 35 MB video file should take about 2 minutes.   Based on a reasonable conversion the entire back up should have taken about 41 days.   We are now 70 days into the process of back up and the remaining files to be backed up are more than half the contents of the computer (which is less than half of the total capacity).    They say, after you have signed up, that the backups are slowed for big files.

A second problem is their technical support.  After about 45 days I called and asked why the system was not even close to finishing.  I got a support guy who could barely speak English.  His answers were mechanical and not helpful.

I finally went out and bought a 2 Terabyte Western for $85.  On my mac, I was asked if I wanted to use this as a Time Capsule device.   The initial backup took overnight.   The drive will continuously back up versions as long as I have it attached.  From my perspective that is simple and secure.   It isn't the cloud but it could be simply by taking the drive with me or by storing it in a fire secure enclosure.

The alternative is a service called Mozy - which is a bit more expensive (although not much) and seems to upload at as much as four times the speed.  From my experience I would not recommend Carbonite.