Customer Support's Ten Most Wanted - Part 3

Customer Support's
Ten Most Wanted


Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 4

In Carbonite’s Customer Support department, we answer thousands of questions each week, and many folks want to know the same things. I’ve compiled a list of the top ten questions we receive most often and the best (general) answers we can give. These answers are specific to Carbonite Version 3.5. (If you’re on an earlier version, log into your account and reinstall Carbonite to get the latest version.) Given the length of some of the answers, I have decided to turn this into a multi-part post. And so, without any further ado, here's part 3:

6. Can I back up my USB external drive? How about my network drive?

At present, Carbonite only backs up local, internal hard drives. It will not back up network drives, external drives, and NAS (network accessed storage) drives. In the near future, we will release a version of Carbonite that supports USB external drives.

7. Can I schedule Carbonite to back up just at certain times?

You sure can! Just double-click on the Carbonite Lock icon in your system tray by your computer’s clock) and select Set Options, and then click Backup Schedule. You can then select the desired times that you would like to back up, or the times that you would not like to back up. By default, Carbonite backs up your system automatically when you add or change files, so you don’t need to set up a schedule at all.

8. How can I view the progress of my backup in more detail than just the percent bar?

Carbonite’s History view can show you exactly which files have been backed up or restored. Hold down the right shift key on your keyboard while you click the Carbonite Lock icon, and select View History. Change the display type to Detail, and you can view a complete log of Carbonite’s backup and restore activity.


To be continued...


Len

Related posts

Comments

June 7. 2008 08:50

Ronald

I recently had to format my hard drive. Now I am attempting to restore from Carbonite. All my firewalls have allowed Carbonite access to my computer, but I still have no luck on restoring files. Any suggestions?

Ronald

June 9. 2008 09:28

Dave

Ronald: Sorry to hear you're having difficulty restoring files. I will have someone from our customer support team contact you at the email address you provided and assist you in restoring your files.

Thanks,
Dave

Dave

September 19. 2008 10:35

Alan Marryat

You said that you will soon have a release that supports USB drives. What about network drives? I use a network drive as a repository to share files between 2 computers (by using Windows Offline Files), and need to back up this shared folder.

Alan Marryat

September 19. 2008 15:02

Dave

Alan: We will be backing up both network and external drives. This will be a feature in our Carbonite Pro product that will be out later this Fall. I can't give you an exact date yet.

Dave

Dave

September 19. 2008 15:33

Alan Marryat

Will there be a new pricing structure for Carbonite Pro?

Alan Marryat

September 19. 2008 15:45

Dave

Alan: Yes, since it will back up network drives, in theory you could back up hundreds of computers on one license. The pricing model for Pro will be tiered storage amount and that amount can be shared by an unlimited number of PCs.

Dave

September 19. 2008 15:57

Alan Marryat

I look forward to evaluating Carbonite Pro. Carbonite was highly recommended by one of my colleagues, and I am impressed with the seamless integration in Explorer as well as the non-intrusive background operation.

Regarding your comment/fear of a single license being used to back up multiple computers, you could keep the permanent drive allocation as unlimited and have tiered storage amounts on the network drives only.

Alan Marryat

January 26. 2009 08:00

Tom Reader

OK, bring on Carbonite Pro, then! I really need the ability to back up a network drive. The 'tiered' pricing structure sounds fair enough, but costs need to stay low to keep this an effective solution. Great product though, but when my free trial is up, I won't be able to renew unless I can back up network drives one way or the other. We - want - Pro! We - want - Pro! We - want - Pro! Any idea of likely release date?

Tom Reader

February 15. 2009 17:19

dan

When will Carbonite finally support external drives? Your continually saying things like "soon" or "later this fall" is looking like a bad joke. I found one online post from way back in Oct 2007 in which David Friend says the support "will be available shortly." I really want to use Carbonite to backup my laptop HD as well as an external disk (which is sometimes attached and sometimes not).

dan

February 16. 2009 13:37

Dave

Dan: I apologize for the delay in our external drive support and I thank you for your patience. We are actively working on that feature and plan to have something available in the next few months. It's always hard to commit to exact dates when you're talking about software development, but we're pretty confident that you'll see the product in the next few months.

However, you touched on an important point by mentioning that your external drive isn't always connected to your computer. A word of caution: Carbonite is backup, not archiving. If you delete a file from your PC, after a month we delete it from the backup. To Carbonite, external hard drives look like any other file or folder on your PC. If they disappear for more than a month, Carbonite considers them deliberately removed and will delete the backup.

Dave

April 15. 2009 11:57

eyecam

The lack of NAS Support is now making me consider other options, I could automatically sync all my files back to each computer and then pay for a licence for each but then I would be backing up 3 x 100Gb to Carbonite.
Surelly it would be better for me to store all my documents once on a NAS and then use a single PC to back them up to carbonite, and only the strain of 1 x 100Gb on you servers?

eyecam

April 17. 2009 04:06

Barcode software

Unfortunately I have had to move to a different solution, at least for now. I simply don't store all my files on a Windows PC - they are on a Linux SAMBA server, accessed from Windows. It's a real shame, as Carbonite is great, but it simply can't access my files on the server yet. Please feel free to contact me when this feature is added though, I'd love to come back as a paying customer (even if it's extra for a 'pro' or 'server' version or something).

Barcode software

May 11. 2009 22:17

John LeHew

I am real anxious for you to begin backing up external drives. Mine is always connected, and is the only place I store most of my pictures. I hope that you add this feature soon, even though I have no indication that my external drive will fail--I really want to send all this data to Carbonite! You have a great product. Thanks for the fair pricing.

John LeHew

May 19. 2009 18:36

Beautifully Scene Images

I too am anxiously awaiting the ability to back up from my external drive, as I store all my work externally. Please give us an update on this feature. Thanks!

Beautifully Scene Images

August 2. 2009 13:27

JL Johnson

Hi,
Tried carbonite out after hearing Leo Laporte mention it on TWiT. Loved it but the lack of external hard drive support is a selling point for me. It has been over a year since I first tried and moved on. It seems from looking at this forum that Carbonite is losing a lot of potential business. Once external drive support is added please let us know. Perhaps buy a new round of Ads on Leo's podcast network?

JL Johnson

August 2. 2009 14:19

JL Johnson

I too am waiting for external drive support. I took advantage of a free trial as rec'd by Leo Laporte but was turned off by lack of support. It appears that Carbonite is losing out on quite a lot of business due to this major gap in service. We've been patient but c'mon...

JL Johnson

September 2. 2009 14:36

John Harrill

I have a newer computer that I would like to transfer my files and programs to from the present computer that has has Carbonite backup for the last two years. What is the procedure for me to get a seamless trasfer of the data on my old had drive to my new computer's hard drive?

John Harrill

September 2. 2009 17:23

Alison

John,

First, make sure that the programs that will be used by files in your backup such as Microsoft Office, Quicken, etc. are installed (but not running) on your new computer. Then, follow the instructions in this tutorial: cp-carbonite.kb.net/article.aspx to restore your files to the new computer.

Alison

Alison

September 26. 2009 14:22

Ken Hoffman

You need to train your support people better. 3 years happy and one call nearly ended that.
1)She had no idea about how to get a customer on the windows 7 beta, I have Windows RTM and a testing background
2) Then I asked about the pricing for Pro.. because I have a home network and do photography so I need more. But why would I start a beta for a product I can't afford? I hope you don't do what most others are doing which is I will go from $55 a year for my 350GB of data I have now to a pricing stucture that would cost me $500 for that same data. home networks and small business are not mae of cash. If you can do 500GB for $150.. I would go for that That would take care of my images and my wife's data.. for a reasonable cost.

Most business seem to ignore that budget advanced users and do options that get too pricey too quickkly.

Ken Hoffman

September 28. 2009 18:01

Alison

Ken,

Sorry to hear that you were unsatisfied with the answers your received from one of our customer support reps. Unfortunately, her answers aren't due to a lack of training - there aren't any answers to your questions at this time. 1) We aren't running a windows 7 public beta. Windows 7 will be supported with our next release of Carbonite. It is being tested by our QA team, but there isn't a public beta that you could get on. 2) The pricing for Carbonite Pro hasn't been released yet. We will release pricing sometime during our beta period, but at this time there is no pricing available. If you are currently using Carbonite, and are worried about the pricing for Carbonite Pro, I would hold off on switching to the Carbonite Pro beta until our pricing is released. That way, you can evaluate whether or not it is the right backup solution for you.

Alison

September 29. 2009 16:15

Devin

Can Carbonite be used on an older Windows 2000 Server

Devin

September 30. 2009 12:29

Alison

Devin,

Carbonite does not support Windows Server 2000. A complete listing of our supported operating systems can be found here: cp-carbonite.kb.net/article.aspx

Alison

Comments are closed