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I couldn’t quite think of a good title for this post – “update” isn’t quite accurate as there’s no real change to the upload speeds from my computer to the Carbonite backup servers.

Carbonite bandwidth usage as at 16 October 2009 21:04

Check this out… for days on end (with the exception of the occasional spike of a few seconds duration which is an aberration more than anything) the upload speeds have consistently been just under 32.25 KB/s. My connection is capable of a lot more, I assure you.

Also, if I was umm, “maxing out my connection”, you would expect that the speeds to Carbonite would change over time as other activities on my computer took some of the available upload bandwidth. The fact is that I have ample bandwidth for Carbonite to run at full speed and for other regular computer activities. Carbonite uploads have been limited – but not by me or by my connection.

Yesterday Carbonite managed to backup a measly average of 25 MB per hour. For the 19 hours thus far (today) the average is 29 MB per hour. As stated in one of my earlier posts, this is barely enough backup capacity to cope with the daily changes to my Outlook PST files.

I would love to hear about the experiences of other Carbonite customers – especially the following types of users:

• You already have stored with Carbonite greater than 100 GB, and or
• You have in the past 2 weeks uploaded to Carbonite a significant amount of data, say, greater than 50 GB.

It really would be beneficial if you have some before and after statistics so you can point to a change in behaviour (if any) of the Carbonite application.

Carbonite has publicly stated that it manages bandwidth, and I guess with a service claiming to offer “unlimited” data storage, it must manage bandwidth availability and costs, but I guess that the question is whether this “bandwidth management” (or throttling) is fair and equitable, and still consistent with that which is advertised.

Update on Saturday, 17 October 2009 at 00:52

For some, a still picture isn’t quite enough, and I guess that’s fair enough.

In this 1 minute video you’ll see not much action – time moves on, but the slow uploads remain. I guess what it does show you, much better than a still image, is the consistency of the upload speed that I’ve mentioned in a number of my posts.

Now, if during that 1 minute period my internet connection was under strain from the other activities on my computer, you would expect to see some fluctuation in the Carbonite uploads as the available bandwidth is redistributed to the applications that need it.

The fact is, I have plenty of available upload capacity – I just wish that Carbonite would use it.

Update on Saturday, 17 October 2009 at 17:44

Carbonite bandwidth usage as at 17 October 2009 17:42

During the backup of my Outlook PST files I thought that I’d take a peek at NetLimiter to see how “fast” Carbonite was sending off my data. Boy, did I receive a surprise!

From the already slow speeds of around 30 KB/s discussed in this post, the speed – all of a sudden – dropped to about 12 KB/s.

Just so you know – no nothing else changed on my computer on or around that time. This is clearly a result of bandwidth management by Carbonite.

Had this issue been caused by my connection or other local factors the change in speed would not have been so dramatic nor would it have stepped down as evenly as it did.

Carbonite bandwidth usage as at 17 October 2009 17:55

This new low upload speed remained in effect for some 13 minutes. Whilst writing this post, the speed went back to the regular slow speed – as you can see.

I haven’t heard from Carbonite in a few days – I just hope that they’re not “parking” my correspondence as they did in the first half of this year when I also questioned Carbonite upload speeds.

At this rate, I would be lucky to be able to backup 30 MB per hour. What a sorry state of affairs!

I’ve previously talked about Carbonite failing with large files (here Carbonite seems to fail with large files) and that I’ve written to Carbonite seeking its assistance. I wanted to give you more information about this whole scenario.

Today I spent some time to repeat the Carbonite-large-file-failure problem. Along the way I took various screen shots to assist with my explanation of what goes on. This is what I did.

Carbonite was nearing the end of backing some recently changed files. All was running normally on my computer.

I selected an AVI video file, 6.3 GB in size, for backup by way of right-clicking in File Explorer, then from the Carbonite menu choosing “Back this up”.

Carbonite menu in Windows Vista File Explorer

What follows is an enormous amount of sustained hard disk drive activity. Presumably this is Carbonite encrypting and encoding the first portion of the file for transmission and, I guess, to be expected.

Then, all uploads from Carbonite will cease. Yes, completely! Carbonite remains in this no-upload state until you next reboot – I’ve previously tested this overnight and yes, there are hours and hours of zero upload from Carbonite. You can see the upload ceasing see this from the screen print.

Here you can see Carbonite uploads going to zero... that's right, no data is being backed up!

Worst of all, not only does Carbonite cease to upload anything, the application takes CPU usage to an incredible 50%. This fluctuates up and down by 1 or 2 percentage points, but aside from that it remains at 50%. As with the zero uploads, this high CPU usage remains until you deselect the large file from your backup and reboot. Simply deselecting the file from the Carbonite backup menu will not resolve the high CPU usage (or the associated zero-upload issue, for that matter). 

Throughout this whole process the Carbonite application shows that it is uploading the file. The reality is far from the truth  – and NetLimiter data proves this. Aside from making your hard disk drive look busy and from taking your CPU usage into high levels, Carbonite is not doing much at all – certainly it is not backing up your file.

Carbonite application status window

In response to my detailed email to Carbonite about this issue, customer service replied with a stock standard response – I know it’s a standard response as I’ve seen the same (or very similar) text quoted on other websites. Carbonite did not properly review my correspondence and it did not address my issue. This is what they said:

Now, I’m only at 102 GB – nowhere near the 200 GB mark – the point at which Carbonite starts to throttle uploads “allocates less” bandwidth.

I have sought more information from Carbonite – let’s see what happens second time around.

So, is this large file backup issue more widespread? Is it a deliberate attempt to discourage people from backing up large files? Something doesn’t smell right about this.

Carbonite bandwidth usage as at 14 October 2009 23:39.

I’ve previously discussed Slow Carbonite uploads the very slow upload speeds from my computer to Carbonite – others have also discussed the same thing – you don’t have to search far to find such complaints.

Sometimes such complaints are, however, misdirected – they might be related to local network speed limitations or other issues. However, when one has tested their connection, when one has no issue with other network traffic and when one is monitoring traffic from Carbonite – and speeds are consistent it can only point to throttling of upload speeds by the Carbonite service itself.

My earlier post showed that Carbonite was uploading at 32.25 KB/s, well today it’s around 16.5 KB/s – the screen shot from NetLimiter proves it. Carbonite must address why these upload speeds are so woefully inadequate.

New York City gridlock.

In the last 24 hours Carbonite has managed to upload 733 MB – it is barely keeping up with the daily changes to my Microsoft Outlook PST files.

Mr David Friend, Chief Executive Officer of Carbonite has previously discussed the way it manages bandwidth. As at the time of the NetLimiter screen print of Carbonite bandwidth usage it was 05:39 in Los Angeles, USA and 08:40 in New York, USA. So, here we have the USA swinging into the daily grind of the working day and Carbonite uploads have (almost) ground to a halt.

This is totally unacceptable. Mr Friend, what is going on?

What if you use a particular application, or system, that creates files with an extension that Carbonite staff have deemed isn’t worthy of backup?

Carbonite users... have to worry about another secret list which excludes even more file types! What a ridiculous situation!

Well… be prepared to exchange many, many email messages with Carbonite “support”. Far from a pleasant experience, you’ll find yourself repeating yourself and in the end you’ll probably want to cancel your subscription. Yes, this whole process has left me exasperated.

My issue is this: I use Vista’s BitLocker feature. BitLocker allows you to encrypt your hard drives so if your computer is stolen whoever gets it won’t be able to access your data. One of the ways you can unlock your BitLocker-protected data is via a small (124 bytes) BEK key file which you store on a USB key. You simply insert this at start-up time and “voila” your data is unlocked.

I already keep this key on a number of USB drives just in case I lose one or the USB drive fails for whatever reason. I thought that keeping the file on my hard drive would be a good idea too as Carbonite would back that up offsite. After all, that’s what Carbonite is supposed to do, back up your data to an offsite location.

How wrong I was. Carbonite won’t backup the tiny, tiny BitLocker encryption file. Further, there are no Carbonite options available on right-click of the file to allow me to force backup of that file.

Carbonite tells me that “Carbonite provides you with unlimited backup of all your irreplaceable files of your computer.” Well, if the one and only key that can access the files of my computer isn’t “irreplaceable” I don’t know what is!

The interesting thing is, if you refer back to my post here What should be included in your backup? you will see that the BEK file type is not listed on the excluded file types.

So what now? Not only do Carbonite’s users need to consider the list of excluded file types (which I suspect many users don’t even know about), they also have to worry about another secret list which excludes even more file types! What a ridiculous situation!

Is Carbonite offering users a backup service or is it not? Carbonite needs to allow its users to control what is important and what is not.

(One day soon I’ll detail the arduous exchange I had with Carbonite support about this.)

Now, should your backup service decide what you backup? My emphatic answer is “no”. Unfortunately, this is exactly what Carbonite does – it decides for you!

For me, the most important things to backup are files that I create myself – that is, documents, spreadsheets, databases, pictures, videos, scans and so on.

Coming in second, are certain files that applications create in their ordinary course of business – application data files. For example, if you have Skype and you log your chat history you’ll need to have the relevant files backed up. If you use Office, you may wish to backup your custom dictionary and so on.

Now, should your backup service decide what you backup? My emphatic answer is “no”. Unfortunately, this is exactly what Carbonite does – it decides for you!

Carbonite has a list of file types it automatically backs up, and it has a list of file types that it won’t backup. Heck, some file types don’t even give you any Carbonite options when you right-click on them – that is, you can’t force Carbonite to back them up even if you want it to.

In an email dated 1 October 2009 Carbonite provided me with its list of exclusions:

Why aren’t people told about this exclusion list before they sign up to Carbonite? I mean, doesn’t unlimited mean unlimited? I pity those people who thought that their important files were being backed up, but after system failure, found that those files had been excluded by Carbonite.

I think that Carbonite needs to be transparent and bring this exclusion list to the direct attention of its potential customers. I suspect that some of those potential customers may not sign up if they see the aforementioned list!

What do you think?

Update on Sunday, 11 October 2009 at 18:36

It would seem that I’m not the only one who thinks that Carbonite isn’t as clear as it should be regarding what it does and doesn’t backup.

You will find the following comment from “Lurfy’s Ma” on http://www.onlinebackupsites.com/CarboniteComments.php

It would be nice if Carbonite provided the sort of information its users are seeking about their own backup.

Here you can see the paltry upload speeds since being throttled. The maximum speed is the same regardless of what else I may be doing on the computer (or on the internet) – this suggests that an artificial limit has been imposed by Carbonite. At this speed I can only upload some 30 MB per hour to my online backup. This is really unsatisfactory.

Now that my blog is well and truly established – oh and this is my first ever blog – I wanted to let you know about an issue I’m having with my Carbonite online backup.

I have noticed that Carbonite appears to have speed-limited (some call this throttling) my upload speed. Now when you consider that an online backup service needs to upload your data for it to be safely stored it’s quite important that you can actually get the data from your computer to your chosen online backup provider.

After return from a holiday I had a lot of photos and videos (16.3 GB to be precise) to add to my computer – of course I would want these backed up – I would hate to lose my holiday snaps! I also had other data and files which changed over my holiday – existing files – previously backed up – that needed to be updated on the Carbonite servers.

Initially all seemed to back up at great speed. In fact, I was achieving over 4 GB per day. In recent days, however, I noticed that Carbonite seemed to be backing up less and less per day. Now I’m down to around 0.5 GB per day. This is significantly less upload speed than my connection can handle so I can only put slow down to an artificial limit imposed by Carbonite.

In order to be sure that I didn’t have a virus or something else consuming my upload capacity I installed a small application which monitors this (I’ll talk about this application at a later time). The application confirmed that nothing else on my computer was using my upload capacity.

Also, I checked with my internet service provider’s list of outages to make sure that nothing there was affecting my upload speeds – nothing was.

Anyway, I’ve written to Carbonite to see what they say. I’ll keep you all up-to-date.