Can Carbonite really backup open or locked files?

If you’ve read some of my other posts you’d know that I’m using a program called NetLimiter to track the network activity of Carbonite online backup.

On a Vista installation, NetLimiter stores its logs in the following location: C:\Users\All Users\Locktime\NetLimiter\2\Stats\nlstats-*.dat

This data is important to me as I want to track network usage over an extended period – not only for Carbonite but also for other applications. Hence, I thought it a good idea that these files were backed up – just in case of crash of my hard drive or other disaster.

“The status of each of these files according to Carbonite is ‘File is pending backup when not in use by another program’.”

Despite this being user data, in a user folder, and not in one of Carbonite’s special exclusion zones (see my post “What should be included in your backup?” for more information about Carbonite’s exclusion list), the files were not being automatically backed up.

Over 48 hours ago I manually selected these files for backup. With the exception of a few reboots, my computer has been on and connected to the internet the whole time.

Guess what? Carbonite hasn’t backed up any of these files! For the record, there are only 164 files, totalling a tiny 1.18 MB. The status of each of these files according to Carbonite is “File is pending backup when not in use by another program”. This message doesn’t inspire much confidence in me about Carbonite’s ability to backup these files.

Now, isn’t Carbonite supposed to be able to backup open and locked files? I’m pretty sure the answer is “yes”, but it would seem that the correct answer is “sometimes”.

This is a copy of the script error caused by the Carbonite backup application.

Regarding open or locked files, Carbonite has previously said to me “Carbonite does not directly access files, but uses a Windows Service called virtual Shadow which makes a copy of the file then Carbonite backs up the copy.” I’ve checked Event Viewer and am not seeing any errors relating to Shadow Copy (also called Volume Snapshot Service or VSS).

I’ll contact Carbonite to see what it has to say about this lack of backup!

Oh, one more thing… the Carbonite application also shows the following script error when attempting to backup these files.