Carbonite failed me when I needed it

You have to put a lot of trust in your backup solution; you don't know whether they can actually deliver for you until you really need their help. I needed that help today, and Carbonite failed me for all the wrong reasons.

I had a drive failure on my Vista computer today, so I hopped on to my "test" machine (running Windows 7) to restore my critical files and get on with helping out my clients. I was disturbed to find that Windows 7 support is completely broken, and no fix will be made available till the end of the year when Windows 7 is officially shipped.

Len Pallazola from Carbonite stated elsewhere on this site that even though they have a solution in the works, they have no intention of letting us see it until Windows 7 hits the shelves. The reason: "we really need to wait until the Windows 7 code base stabilizes before we can release it to our customers." Sadly, that's a load of absolute drivel. The Windows 7 code base has been stabilized since the beta release earlier this year, and the APIs have been completely finalized since the RC release a while back (that's what "Release Candidate" means!). And even if Windows 7 changes down the road, all you would have to do is update your fix to compensate! I can see holding off "official" support for Win 7 until the RTM date, but actually withholding fixes to problems that are preventing customers from restoring their data? Unconscionable.

So now I'm stuck unable to help my clients until I can build and install a Vista-or-lower computer so that I can get Carbonite to deliver me my files. Fantastic.

In that same post, by the way, Len points out that users should look to Carbonite "Remote" (carbonite.com/remote) to restore files from an unsupported OS. Here's what he didn't tell you: with this tool you have to click and download your files ONE AT A TIME. There is no way to restore a set of files (such as an entire directory) all in one go. Since I have several thousand small files that need to be restored, this tool is useless to me. Just how much thought really went in to this tool? Did they even bother looking at what the competing backup providers can do? I would recommend having someone at Carbonite sign up for a backup account with Mozy (it's free) and just take a day or two to get familiar with how this type of operation should be run.

Sadly, the only reason why I even use Carbonite at all is so that would know whether or not to recommend it to my clients. Looks like I got my answer.