I’ve used Carbonite for more than a couple of years by now. I like a lot of things about it, and there’s a few things about it that have annoyed me.
I’ve seen a lot of the alternatives out there, and I do think that for most people Carbonite is probably the best choice. Especially if you don’t like size limits to your backup, which I most assuredly do not.
Carbonite still offers unlimited online backups. Your backup size is theoretically unlimited, but what they do when it gets a little big is choke your upload speed down to a trickle. I guess I can understand that, and I’ll certainly put up with it for unlimited backups.
I really like Crashplan, however, and if I was starting from scratch I would probably go that direction. In fact I’m probably going to use some hybrid of the two. It has some awesome features for the more advanced computer user, but along with that it’s more complicated than Carbonite for your average computer user.
I’ve had some issues with changing location of backed-up data with Carbonite. Don’t. There’s basically no way to change your file structure without totally re-backing up any data that’s moved. Totally ridiculous and makes no sense, but that’s the way it is. Nobody’s perfect I guess.
Anyway, at the end of the day I do recommend Carbonite for the average computer user. Especially if you don’t have any automatic online backups set up now. It shouldn’t even need to be debated, if you have anything on your computer you’d like to keep, you’ve got to have an online backup.
You should have a local backup too (external drive, etc.), but that alone isn’t good enough.
Plus, I need referral credits!