Carbonite Safe review: All-you-can-eat online backup

Price When Reviewed

$96 yearly for one laptop (limitless storage)

Best Prices Today: Carbonite Safe Online Backup

Carbonite Safe stays one among our favourite on-line backup options, because of limitless storage to your backups and integration into Windows Explorer. However, we had been dissatisfied to seek out the latter considerably degraded in Windows 11.

Note that when you hop on Carbonite by March 31, 2024, it’s out there at an unbelievable 75% off, although we don’t know if it can carry over into the renewal cycle.

Author’s word: There is a few inconsistency in the best way OpenTextual content/Carbonite seek advice from this program, largely calling it Carbonite Safe, but in addition Carbonite Backup, and Carbonite Safe Backup.

What are Carbonite Safe’s options?

Carbonite Safe provides limitless information backup with file versioning, i.e., it retains older variations of recordsdata. Versioning is what makes Carbonite a backup reasonably than a sync service. All information is encrypted and you could decide to maintain the encryption key in your individual possession or let Carbonite host it.

Further studying: See our roundup of the very best on-line backup companies to study competing merchandise.

By default this system intelligently targets solely the commonest information and places: i.e., the Windows paperwork, photos, music, and so forth. folders, although there’s an possibility to begin with no recordsdata or folders chosen.

There are not any jobs as such, simply the one backup process that uploads information to Carbonite’s on-line storage farm. Which brings us to a minor gripe — the dearth of an area secondary vacation spot reminiscent of an exterior drive. Local backups are far faster and simpler to revive.

If we now have every other criticism, it’s the restricted on-line viewing (photos) and lack of modifying. Carbonite is for backup and storage, not working on-line.

If you fall into that group of customers who retailer important information exterior of the frequent places or just need to select what you need backed up by yourself, Carbonite Safe makes it very straightforward (Windows 10) to comparatively straightforward (Windows 11) so as to add supply folders and recordsdata to your backup.

Prior to Windows 11, you could possibly merely right-click on the folder or file and choose Carbonite > Back this up. However, thanks partially to Microsoft’s choice to stack context menus in Windows 11, you could now right-click, choose Show More Options, then choose Carbonite > Back this up.

While I’d like to blame this solely on Microsoft and their seemingly brain-dead willpower to extend the variety of clicks required to carry out each process, WinRAR has managed to insert its choices on the root stage of context menus. Apparently Carbonite’s builders haven’t sussed out this trick.

Carbonite additionally encompasses a intelligent technique of signaling the backed-up standing of a file or folder by superimposing a tiny dot on the icon: orange for backup pending and inexperienced for already backed up, and so forth. See under.

Testing on two PCs, these dots had been current; nevertheless, on our fundamental software program testbed they weren’t. Carbonite tech help indicated that this was possible attributable to different software program having hooked into this means. As there was no different software program monkeying with icons, we’re undecided what the offender would possibly’ve been.

Carbonite skips granular scheduling in favor of a restricted type of steady information safety (CDP). Continuous backup typically means recordsdata are backed up quickly after they modify. In this case, nevertheless, there’s a major limitation in that just one change is backed up in close to actual time.

Subsequent adjustments to a file will not be backed up for an additional 24 hours. For occasion, if I had been engaged on this text in Word, and saving often as is my behavior, the ultimate model won’t be backed up till the following day — even when I clicked on the Back up now button within the settings space.

Carbonite additionally provides once-a-day backup, which will probably be greater than adequate for many customers. To be trustworthy, I’d reasonably set this for the tip of the workday (you could select the hour) than depend on Carbonite’s type of “continuous,” which could not again up till properly into tomorrow. Unless I need each model I’ve saved, that’s. I typically don’t.

As beforehand talked about Carbonite doesn’t supply a secondary backup to native media, which at all times makes for a faster restore course of. You can use Windows’ File History or the like in conjunction to facilitate this.

Restoring information from Carbonite is so simple as searching to the digital drive that Carbonite installs in your PC to behave as a portal to your on-line information. You may entry the digital drive through the Carbonite context menu with the “Open this folder in Carbonite Backup Drive” possibility. Files pending backup are stored in a separate folder on the drive.

Oddly, we might see the Carbonite digital drive when deciding on This PC (proven under) from the placement tree in Windows Explorer, nevertheless it wasn’t listed in stated tree as almost all drives — bodily, digital, inner, or exterior — usually are.

You may restore information by clicking on “Get my files back” or “View my backup” buttons on the primary web page of the consumer software program. These ship you to the online, the place you may choose information to revive. If that is publish system catastrophe, you’ll in fact have to re-install the consumer software program.

Alternatively, you may obtain information on to any PC you select from the Carbonite web site after signing in together with your login and password.

Note that older variations of recordsdata are retained (aka versioning), however you’ll have to right-click over the file and choose “Restore previous versions” to see them — they’re not displayed by default.

Carbonite additionally supplies purchasers for iOS and Android. These present entry to recordsdata, however don’t again up something from the telephone.

How quick is Carbonite Safe Backup?

I observed no efficiency hit in any respect whereas utilizing Carbonite in steady backup mode to again up about 0.5GB value of continuously modified recordsdata. That’s in all probability as a result of the backup is just not finished in actual time, and even repeatedly within the conventional sense.

Carbonite informed us that recordsdata will probably be backed up inside 10 minutes of the primary recorded change, however subsequent adjustments might not happen for as much as 24 hours. My final go-round with this system, subsequent adjustments appeared to add way more shortly. However, this time there have been standing notes on the digital drive saying the “File will be backed up again in 23 hours” and at eight hours and counting, most had been nonetheless within the Pending Backup folder.

Unless you need to save each model of your extremely edited recordsdata, you could be higher off with a once-a-day backup.

Changes had been significantly faster to point out up on the digital drive than the online. This is little doubt attributable to some caching occurring, which is par for the course with software program interfacing with on-line storage reminiscent of R-Drive Image and cloud storage managers reminiscent of CloudMounter and Mountain Duck, although the lag with these packages is considerably shorter.

These experiences seek advice from the Personal model of Carbonite that we examined. The far costlier Professional variations might behave in a different way relating to “continuous” backup.

How a lot does Carbonite Safe value?

Carbonite’s single-computer Basic plan is $96 a 12 months, the Plus plan with help for a single exterior drive is $132 a 12 months, and a Prime plan with courier supply of your backup is $162 a 12 months. All plans embody limitless storage, however the Basic plan doesn’t mechanically again up movies and doesn’t help exterior drives.

Basic, which is the plan I examined doesn’t help community places or logical drives mounted with the cloud administration software program talked about above.

Carbonite provides a complete comparison of pricing and features that can assist you resolve.

Should you purchase Carbonite Safe Backup?

Carbonite Safe (Personal variations) is a succesful set-it-and-forget-it backup service that eliminates any worries about working out of room when backing up your stuff. It’s a worthy service for the typical person. Just take the continual backup declare with a grain of salt.

Editor’s word: Because on-line companies are sometimes iterative, gaining new options and efficiency enhancements over time, this assessment is topic to alter in an effort to precisely mirror the present state of the service. Any adjustments to textual content or our remaining assessment verdict will probably be famous on the prime of this text.