Hands on with Carbonite Online Backup

I write about Mozy's online backup service so much that the good folks at Carbonite harass me endlessly to give their competing service a try. Finally, I've had the chance to test-drive it to see if Carbonite can compete with Mozy when it comes to backing up your precious data on the internet.

Carbonite works just like Mozy in function: You select files and folders you want to back up, and Carbonite works in the background to send them over the net to its own hard drives. The data is encrypted all the way, so security is (essentially) a non-issue.

Compared to Mozy, Carbonite is easier to configure and manage. Carbonite is better-integrated with Windows than Mozy, and you can select what you want to back up by simply right-clicking a file or folder and selecting "Back this up" from the special Carbonite menu. Items that you're backing up have their icons tagged with a green (backed up) or yellow (not yet backed up) dot, so you can tell at a glance what's getting backed up. The icon system represents a nice advantage over Mozy.

However, I had two problems with the Carbonite service. The first is that you can't specify backup times like you can with Mozy. Carbonite is supposed to be "always on," backing up whenever your computer is idle. That sounds great in theory, but there were several occasions where I selected a small file for backup, left my PC running overnight, and saw in the morning that it still had a yellow dot. Other times, it would be backed up in a matter of minutes. There's no real log system to show you what's been backed up; you have to go into the Carbonite Backup Drive program (a separate app from the backup system) to see what's been saved. It's a frustrating problem mainly because it's so erratic, and power users will be quite aggravated by it. That said, Mozy has its share of bugs too, when it comes to logging backups and letting you know what's safe and what's not, but overall I have found Mozy slightly more comforting.

The other issue,  and one which I expect will kill the deal for most readers, is that Carbonite has no free version, while Mozy gives you 2GB of online space at no charge. Carbonite does give you an unlimited, free trial for 15 days, but after that it's $49.95 a year. Frankly, that's not cheap. Carbonite counters that 2GB won't get you very far, but I can fit every digital photo I've ever saved into that amount of space. Everything I've ever written can fit into 2GB, as well. If you want to upgrade later, Mozy's $4.95 a month gives you unlimited space. That's slightly more expensive than Carbonite, but barely.

Mozy also includes a 30-day versioning system that can be invaluable if you overwrite and back up a file.

Carbonite isn't bad. In fact, it's a very good service that works well most of the time. I'm sure I'd recommend it if Mozy didn't exist or if there was a free option available. But don't take my word for it. Feel free to give it a try: The 15-day trial is completely free and requires no credit card to download. If anyone has tried both services I'd love to hear your opinion the comments section below.