I received a free year of Carbonite service when I purchased a Network Magic product. Like many of you, my experience with Carbonite has been far from stellar.
Recently I tried to reinstall Carbonite on my home PC, only to discover that my account had been disabled. After contacting suport a second time (my first email went unanswered) a CS rep told me my account was inactive because “your Network Magic subscription started on 12/19/2007 and expired on 12/19/2008.”
I had to look at my calendar a few times to make sure I hadn’t lost my mind (it *is* still 2008, right??) When I contacted support asking for clarification, they told me I had to reinstall Carbonite using a new activation code; all of my backed files were gone.
After some interaction with their CS Manager, the final explanation was this: because I uninstalled Carbonite, my files remained on the server for 15 days. If you don't reinstall the software within those 15 days server your subscription ends before prematurely and your secure files go POOF!
Since then, I've looked at just about every online backup provider there is: Mozy, Athena, Syncplicity, and SugarSync. (I've opted for the latter, but that's a different discussion..) My largest turnoff with Mozy is their pricing plan. While SugarSync allows me 10GB of data on multiple machines, Mozy allows unlimited data on 1. I've also felt that the process of restoring files through Mozy to be time consuming in the very least. SugarSync acts more like a WebDAV drive, where I can download any backed file from any computer with a web browser.
Whatever you choose, I wholeheartedly agree that offsite backing is a must. Even if you were to take advantage of the free 2GB offer Mozy has, it's certainly a step in the right direction.
Well, FWIW, on Mozy, this thing does NOT seem to upload only changes to a file. I have a 1GB Access 2007 database. Just opening an Access database in Access will cause the timestamp and presumably a few bits in the file to change. Mozy uploads the entire 1GB file each day I open this file.
Still like the service, but the uploading of only changed parts of a file doesn't seem to be working for me, and I have whatever latest version they pushed down a month or so ago.
Well, FWIW, on Mozy, this thing does NOT seem to upload only changes to a file. I have a 1GB Access 2007 database. Just opening an Access database in Access will cause the timestamp and presumably a few bits in the file to change. Mozy uploads the entire 1GB file each day I open this file.
Strange...that flies in the face of what they told me. Have you emailed them to ask about this specific instance?
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It depends on what data in the file has changed. I've seen instances where editing one part of the file causes the whole file to reupload but editing another part causes only a minimal upload of data. I know that if you change the album art in an MP3, the whole thing will reupload but if you change some of the text tags, only a small amount of data is reuploaded. Also, my Evernote database is around 22MB but whenever I change any of it, Mozy only uploads a fraction of a megabyte.
Strange...that flies in the face of what they told me. Have you emailed them to ask about this specific instance?
No, because it really doesn't matter to me. It runs overnight and I only touch this file 2-3 times a month. I didn't know Mozy was supposed to do this "changed part" upload thing, so it doesn't bother me that it doesn't do it well, if at all, at least on my machine.
Wow. That's RIDICULOUS that they don't back up video files. I left Carbonite because they wouldn't back up ISO files, EXE files, and a few other file types that I consider part of my data...but to hear that they don't back up videos, which is certainly a part of what people would consider their data...that's just inexcusable.
Carbonite is really dropping the ball here. I'll be moving my friends and family away from Carbonite as their subscriptions expire.
I'll also front-page this issue...it's definitely worth people knowing about.
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Watch out for Jungle Disk-No real customer service, JD wiped all data over holidays
I have a very hard time believing this, but it appears that Jungle Disk may have wiped out all our company's data that they were responsible for storing. I find it hard to believe because I can recall only two email exchanges where an attempt was made to reconcile the issues of an error on the processing of our AMEX. The notification happened a few days before Christmas holidays when our offices are closed, and they wiped the data on jan 5th. Only one email was sent notifying us ogf the bank error. We tried to rectify the bank card error as easily, safely and quickly as possible, but we never heard from anyone at JD beyond the email thread below. I am flabbergasted to hear that you may have erased our data. It might be conceivable if you had tried to contact us a few times and perhaps a few months had gone by (after all, the fee is quite small). That is our only copy of that invaluable data and I hope to god that you can recreate it.
Please provide a phone number so that I can actually talk to a human because that apparently was the problem in this case--ie the simple and safe delivery of an AMEX number.
VERY frustrated right now. I hope this can be fixed.
Marty McDonald
----- All replies must be above this line -----
Ticket #20879: Re: Problem processing your Jungle Disk Purchase
Your request (#20879) has been updated.
It is important to complete ALL steps even if the credit card payment information is correct.
Marty McDonald, Jan 04 11:12 pm (CST):
The Amex should work. Can you try running it through again?
On 1/4/10 9:05 PM, "Jungle Disk Billing" wrote:
> Hello marty mcdonald,
>
> We have been unable to successfully bill your outstanding Jungle Disk invoice
>
> Your account has been suspended until payment is complete.
>
>
>
> If you do not update your payment information and complete the transaction
> within 15 days your account will be deactivated and any data stored in your
> Jungle Disk account will be deleted.
>
>
>
> To update your Amazon.com payment authorization please visit:
>
> https://www.jungledisk.com/secure/account/newtoken.ashx
>
>
>
> To view details of your invoices please visit:
>
> https://www.jungledisk.com/secure/account/invoices.aspx
>
>
>
> If you have any questions please contact us at http://support.jungledisk.com
>
>
This email is a service from Jungle Disk Support
----- All replies must be above this line -----
Ticket #24252: Re: Problem processing your Jungle Disk Purchase
Your request (#24252) has been updated.
It is important to complete ALL steps even if the credit card payment information is correct.
Marty McDonald, Feb 08 11:09 pm (CST):
Hmm. Odd enough. How can I get you the CC # safely?
On 2/4/10 9:05 PM, "Jungle Disk Billing" wrote:
> Hello marty mcdonald,
>
> We have been unable to successfully bill your outstanding Jungle Disk invoice
>
> Your account has been deactivated due to non-payment and any data stored in
> your Jungle Disk account has been deleted.
>
>
>
> If you have any questions please contact us at http://support.jungledisk.com
>
I have a very hard time believing this, but it appears that Jungle Disk may have wiped out all our company's data that they were responsible for storing. I find it hard to believe because I can recall only two email exchanges where an attempt was made to reconcile the issues of an error on the processing of our AMEX. The notification happened a few days before Christmas holidays when our offices are closed, and they wiped the data on jan 5th. Only one email was sent notifying us ogf the bank error. We tried to rectify the bank card error as easily, safely and quickly as possible, but we never heard from anyone at JD beyond the email thread below. I am flabbergasted to hear that you may have erased our data. It might be conceivable if you had tried to contact us a few times and perhaps a few months had gone by (after all, the fee is quite small). That is our only copy of that invaluable data and I hope to god that you can recreate it.
Please provide a phone number so that I can actually talk to a human because that apparently was the problem in this case--ie the simple and safe delivery of an AMEX number.
VERY frustrated right now. I hope this can be fixed.
It looks to me from the emails that you posted that they deactivated your account on January 4 but didn't wipe the data until February 4. I am sorry to see that they did not respond to you quickly, with at least a copy of those instructions (though they did, in fact, send a link to the instructions to you in the initial email.) If you read the link you'll see that it is not an issue with running the AMEX card, but with the fact that JungleDisk uses Amazon Payments, and you must reauthorize their account each year.
Have video files? Do NOT buy Carbonite!
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