In my opinion, this is a serious failure from the part of Carbonite on several levels – design, disclosure, user interface, and perhaps business model. Consider this:

1) The video exclusion is so much concealed in minor text, that it’s unnoticeable. Given that the main purpose of any data backup service is to preserve data, any deviations (i.e. not preserving, which will result in data loss) should be super vocal, should specify exactly what will be lost, and how to prevent it (and I mean a reasonable way, not “right-click 1000 files and select backup”).

2) Carbonite phrase it that videos won’t be “automatically” backed up, suggesting that manually right-clicking each excluded file and selecting “back up” is a viable alternative. This is a ludicrous idea for anyone who has more than a dozen files to back up. The convenience of backing up is being able to right click the one or two folders where I keep my important stuff and say “back this all up”.

3) Carbonite shouldn’t be in the business of deciding what to back up or not (i.e. they shouldn’t decide what may be important for me and what isn’t) – I am paying them to back up what _I_ myself decide is important.

4) If their reasons for not backing up videos is that it will break their business model of “all you can back up for $59.99”, then they should rethink their model. I am sure most of us are willing to pay by the GB if needed just to be sure that what _we_ chose to back up is safely backed up.

5) When it comes to data backup services, there is only one cardinal sin – losing data. Everything else (including slow restore) can somehow be worked around. But once data is gone, it’s gone. Based on reading the comments above and on numerous other sites that almost all users have missed the small print about the video (and other file types) not being backed up, and as a result, Carbonite have set themselves up by their design to fail their customers at the worst time – when the customers need to restore the data.

The only hope in my case is that the disk that failed may be repairable. It spins fine and doesn’t make funny noises – it’s just that BIOS doesn’t recognize it. So perhaps some wiring inside it went bad. If so, a “clean room” procedure (opening it up and moving the plates to another enclosure, then sealing it) could fix it, and I’ll have my data back. “Clean room” procedures start at $600 and can go to a few thousand, which is a far cry from $59, but in a few years time I’ll miss my daughter’s videos much more than the money I will need to spend right now, so I’ll try that route.

Thanks for stopping by!