Wish I could report back that all is well but I'm not sure at all what carbonite is doing- I'm guessing that demigrator must screw it up.

If i look at the carbonite status window it tells me backup is complete. There's a button to click to "backup ASAP"- and whenever i am near a computer i rdc in and click it. It responds like its doing something but everytime I go back it tells me backup is complete and it got nowhere.

Last night after clicking it a bunch i got it up to 65 files complete but overnight without me hitting the button it got no further.

I'll let it sit and fester some more- maybe it will magically catch up...

on a positive note- i tried a restore- you select the file from your 'carbonite backup drive'- tell it to restore. It asks where to put the copy. I told it to put it on my desktop. In a matter of seconds it was there. So once you get it to backup- it works nicely.

Carbonite works fine on MSS, I have been running for some time now.

Mozy will not work unless you use the pro edition which is $$

HP Upline works nicely but does not install correctly on the MSS (Go figure it's a HP) if you install it on a regular PC and move it to your MSS you can get it to work.

IDrive I did not care for

Those are all I tried

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6 hours later and I'm still at the same 65 of ~10,000 files backed up. So something is hanging my install up.

Did you do anything special when you installed it?

I can't find anyway to tell it to prioritize iteself.

I followed the installer, the only thing I did outsive of the normal defualts is I asked that it not backup my desktop and my documents folders but let me decide what to back up. Then i added the photo share directory.

Nope, just installed and choose what to backup and checked it every so often and it just kept plugging along.

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if you dig in the carbonite backup- nothing has the status message that i posted above?

Todays update:

I’m up to 75 files backed up…

I sent an email to carbonite last night for support- will see if they bother to reply.

They were pretty ok on e-mail generally in 24hrs. They will first answer in a canned response and the issue I had with their support was if I asked a question and it took a couple of days to get the answer each day was another person. I dislike that as I have to explain it all over again.

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Got too impatient waiting for support from carbonite. Uninstalled and am trying idrive.

Not sure why it’s not the hands down winner.

To me it looks like the front runner.

1) They specifically say they support server 2003 AND WHS. Unlike carbonites- “well it should work” (winner = idrive)
2) Price is basically same as carbonite if you buy a year (50$)- if you don’t want a year then it’s 4.95 a month ( a wash)
3) Idrive spells out that fifty dollars annual gives you 150gigs- carbonite says there 50 dollars gets you “unlimited” which is defined as “not too much more than 50gigs” with “too much” is defined at their discretion (I just hate this nonsense of late that unlimited isn’t really unlimited) . And apparently carbonite will throttle your speeds down if you get to 50gig. Not sure if more then 150gig is realistic for an online backup for most people- would take weeks to upload more than that. (winner I drive for a higher cap and honesty).
4) Carbonite gives you 15 day trial but idrive gives you 2gb free account that you can trial (a wash for me but for many without media 2gig free might be all they need)
5) Idrive stores 30 prior versions- carbonite just the current version of the file (winner idrive)
6) Idrive seems to work in the foreground while carbonite is in the background- generally I would prefer background but since carbonite doesn’t work I’d also like the ability to see and interact with it to figure it out. (a tie depending on one’s opinions)

Idrive looks to have many more options you can set- carbonite is basically just there installed or not installed- the only thing you can do with carbonite is pick a setting not to use all upstream bandwidth. I-drive lets you pick what % of your bandwidth to use (very handy once set up- once my initial backup is donme I’ll probably set it to just use 10 or 20% or something so it doesn’t mess up any other internet apps) , what time to run daily backups, and it also has a feature you can pick that it constantly autosaves all changes in all files up to 50mb in size within 10 minutes. (the larger files get pickup up at the nightly backup) There's more but that's what I've explored so far.

Idrive also apparently lets you pick off files from their website- so you can get read access to any file from any interent connected computer. Only way to get files from carbonite on another PC is to install the software and do a complete restore to the new pc.

Customer support is a wild card but can’t be too much worse than carbonite- didn't even get the 'bot answer from my email of 24 hrs ago. (I assume they are all pretty much help yourself judging by all the blogs and whatnot and the insanely cheap prices if you think about it)

So far I installed idrive and it just works- no effort at all. I started with a 890mb folder and it’s just doing it right now as I type- looks like should take 80 minutes for that on my cable line.

restore works fine.

idrive sold.

Sorry carbonite did not work for ya. I have over 50gigs with no problems at all. I guess I'm one of those users that only uses it for backup as If I needed a file I would grab it locally. Also as I have my files backed up on my PC and my MSS and the cloud, the cloud is more of piece of mind. I look at it as if I'm able to mess with too much on my cloud backup the "Human Factor" comes into play and we all know what that can do.

So that is why there are multiple online companies out there all use different methods and features. All of our needs are out there somewhere.

Again sorry carbonite did not work for ya, but atleast you found one that did.

I also disagree with the throttling carbonite backed up all my files at the same speed and did not seem slow at all.

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I didn't see any official mention of throttling, just some blog posts here and there. So could be maybe just paranoid users and not really going on.

I'm mostly using it for peace of mind too- so i dont really need all the options- carbonite would have been just fine for my needs. (but I do like the 30 versions- that's nice to be able to regress a file if I screw something up- can't really think of needing that too opten but it is a cool option to have)

Mostly I think they are all pretty much equal- but there are minor differences depending on what is important to any one user. I am just really sick and tired of this marketing BS of offering "unlimited" that comes with strings attached- so everything else being equal I'll take my business elsewhere. Had carbonite just worked I'd be using it today, but since it didn't work and I started poking around on the 'net i found out there terms are not really unlimited.

the FTC should really do something about all these outright lies about unlimited- sprint, verizon wireless, t-mobile, comcast, carbonite.....

Keepvault review

http://homeservershow.com/add-in-review ... erver.html

I have determined that it is just not cost effective for me to use online storage. I have over 1TB of data (including music, movies, etc...). I could just use the online storage only for the essentials, but I would still want an offsite backup for the rest, so I will just continue to back up everything to an externall HDD and take offsite.

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Cheers,
Damian

DIY WHS - 12.5TB and growing, too many gadgets to list

Did you read the MediaSmartServer blog today?
Blog - http://www.adigitalhomeblog.com
"Like a midget at a urinal, stay on your toes!" - Lieutenant Frank Drebin

I’d also throw out that 1tb online for most people probably isn’t practical- never mind pricey. It seems that 10gb upload a day is fairly typical of an average broadband connection. If one had 1,000 gb’s it would take 100 days to backup. Maxing out at that rate, one would also be uploading around 300gb a month which is more then the limits permitted by many ISP’s. Comcast has one of the more generous limits for services that do limit and they cut you off at 250gb.

So for 4 months running you would max out your allowed bandwidth just backing up.

At that point you would need to start an incremental backup for 4 months of changes and that might take another month.

One last update-

i-drive still working fine.

But there is a HUGE difference in support between carbonite and idrive. While true that carbonite support indeed sucks like all the online blogs indicate, I-drive is very respectable.

I submitted an idrive support ticket Thursday at 9:11 pm and they replied this morning at 1:19am that’s around ~4 HOURS.

I submitted my support request to carbonite Sunday 9/28 8:14pm, they replied Thursday 10/2/08 at 5:15 pm. That’s ~ 4 DAYS

Major difference.