Fine Pickle
Hi.
Here I am watching paint dry while my laptop backs-up 150 gigs of data onto it’s brand new hard drive. A hundred and fifty GIGS. Remember when a mega bite was a big deal? Le sigh.
I don’t even know what to say. I thought I’d be up and running in a week. It’s looking more like a month. I’m praying that if I back-up my photos later, I can carve it back down to a week or two. I don’t know anymore. I hate to get my hopes up.
Everything is upside down. I’m sure there is a lesson in this and I have a hunch what it is but it’s not making the growing pains any better.
When Apple reinstalled my new hard drive they renamed my username and now Carbonite doesn’t know where to put all my files. I thought I could just direct Carbonite to the new username but it doesn’t look like that is working.
There are a gabzillion files all over my desktop and stacking by the minute. I don’t know what to do. When it first started happening I cancelled the back-up and had a Carbonite employee walk me through the process. They didn’t know why it was writing to the desktop either but we restarted it anyway, double-checking all the locations directions. They advised me not to change my Apple username. I’m not sure if they were right. But who am I to say? I’m really not a tech head.
Half an hour into the second restore the files started stacking on my desktop again.
At this point I’m just cutting my losses. We are a full 24 hours into the back-up and I don’t want to start over again. I’ll just be the filing queen for a week or two. That’s better than sitting here watching a scroll bar creep across my screen at speeds I can’t even see.
I keep taking screen shots so I can compare them hourly and see that indeed files are moving byte by byte. But some files are bigger than others and the numbers don’t change for really long periods of time. When I asked the Carbonite employee how I could tell if the back-up was stuck or just crunching a big file, she said to just watch it for a day or two.
A DAY OR TWO? Oh my goodness. I remember when I thought wasting twenty minutes was a big deal. Now I have to sit here and wait a day or two to see if the back-up is possibly stuck or not. I’m thinking the lesson here is:
P A T I E N C E
I’m not so sure I’m a fan of Carbonite anymore. I’m so thankful I backed up but I’m thinking my next back-up will be on an external hard drive where I can control things.
So that’s the news. I know. Boring and complainy. I’m sorry. I think in a day or two I’ll have a better attitude and move on to documenting all the cute outfits Bug wears or I don’t know, something…
14 Comments
Sonja
You know that scene at the beginning of You’ve Got Mail, where Greg Kinnear says “You think that machine is your friend…”
What a big, fat pain in the rear!
Melissa K. in Nebraska
BUMMER! Well, just know by looking at those photos, we ALL feel your pain.
beck
UGH. Uuuuuuuuuugh.
OMSH
I am a huge fan of both types of backup. I use Backblaze for my back-ups, but I also have an external hard drive. I divided the external hard drive in half using time machine. So, I’ve got one half o it assigned to photos and the other half to everything else.
I do external hard drive back-ups when my computer is slowing and I realize it is just all the heavy PSD files and photos on it.
I do the Backblaze nightly.
a chris
Well. Now we have a better idea of the pros and cons of the available backup methods. :/
I wholeheartedly agree with getting an external drive too. A local and a remote backup are good to have. I’m weak in the other direction. I only have local, in between times I remember to bring a drive in to work. If we had a fire or a burglary, I could lose everything newer than the drive I left at Mom and Dad’s place after Christmas.
150 gigs is still a lot to suck down from the net. Here’s hoping there are no more complications!
Yara
That just stinks. I’m sorry.
Becca
Just keep reminding yourself of all that would have been lost without this backup.
And I hope it’s doing the big files now and all the little ones will just zoom in quickly.
Kathryn S
We use Apple Time machine that automatically backs up on to an external hard drive. When my husbands laptop died it was very easy to recover the files on to the new machine from the external drive. That won’t help you now, but if your looking for a new solution I really like Time Machine. I hope you get your files back soon.
bethany actually
Troy says our back-up service offers a thing where they’ll send you a new hard drive with all your files on it for around $100. Is that something Carbonite offers, maybe?
SAJ
I just called them and they only offer that for non-apple computers. I guess Carbonite is really not a good fit for me. Live and learn!
Cathy
Wow, I didn’t know it took that long to back up, yikes. I have to say I chuckled at the note above your screen though!
Corey
I used Time Machine and an external. After having my computer fry itself and having to get a new one, I can say that using Time Machine is a DREAM. Everything was put onto the new computer as easily as can be, in less than an hour and I had a LOT of things on that old computer. It also saved my butt later, when an update went wrong. Time Machine is REALLY one of the best things I’ve done for myself. You should try it.
Terri
Ugggggggggggg and I just bought Carbonite thinking it was THE best. Oh well. I do have an external hard drive called My Passport that I also backup to and that seems to work well and easy. I’ve lost too many photos to glitchy laptops to not have at least that as, well, a backup. Hope it all worked out well and Carbonite did what it is supposed to….eventually.
SAJ
If you are on a PC you will be golden. My problems are Apple-based. Carbonite claims to be compatible with Apple but they don’t really have the support when things go wrong.