(I had to laugh – “Here’s where the folks that love Carbonite congregate” and there are no posts!! that says a lot…)
So, I’ve just gone through an extensive rework of my backup strategy to protect myself from ransomware. It all worked out well except for one small detail concerning Carbonite. I’ve used the product for a good number of years and on the whole I like it and indeed have recommended it.
Then I discovered one tiny limitation which, although not a show-stopper, is really annoying. It won’t automatically back up any file over 4GB – you have to manually find the files and tell Carbonite to back up it from the right-click menu.
A little research showed me that this is documented in their help, so that’s fair. I called their support and asked if there’s a reg key to enable this, but the answer was “no”. So basically this is a marketing limitation, and to me makes no sense at all – they let you do it, just not automatically!
Why is this a big deal for me? My backup strategy calls for Macrium grandfather-father-son image backups to an external RAID drive (sadly, no space in the PC for internal RAID), which is then backed up real time by Carbonite. Except for files over 4GB, which is basically every full and differential backup!! I therefore have to check manually every day and right-click these files to tell it to back them up.
Now I know about it, it’s mostly just annoying, but when I first discovered the problem I had just hit a serious hardware issue which made me check that I had all the image files I’d need if I had to rebuild the PC – only to discover the full backup file wasn’t there. Instant panic! Fortunately it all worked out well – so I thought I’d share my discovery.
I’m now looking at Backblaze which backs up any size file, but it doesn’t use the backup status markers like Carbonite’s little green or orange bubbles on each file. More research needed, but at least I have a workable solution.
