Go out and buy an external USB drive, and backup your files to it manually.
Second question: How fast is your upload speed?
Most people with Cablemodem or DSL have decent download speeds (web sites to your computer) but have very limited upload speeds (your computer to Carbonite) of 768 Kbps or less.
When you first sync your computer to Carbonite, the entire hard drive has to upload. If you have 10 GB to upolad, and 768 Kbps of upload speed, it will take:
( 10 Gigabytes x 8 bits per byte ) / 768 Kilobits per second = 104,167 seconds, or 1,736 minutes, or 28.935 hours. How long did it take to upload your 3%?
Now, I'm not familiar with Carbonite, but is there a way to limit the files being backed up to just important files such as your family photos, documents, Turbotax returns, etc? If you have lots and lots of photos, you'll still probably have many Gigabytes to upload.
The good news is, once the initial upload is finished, after that only new and changed files get uploaded, which takes much less time.
Hope this helps.
You may have to give access to the their web site to your firewall software.
TrueImage can make a rescue CD. I have actually had to restore using this software and it worked great. Another feature is that you can "mount" the backup images in case you just need to get a particular file that you lost.
Also, if you check Slickdeals.net occasionally there is a deal up there to get the product for $10. I wouldn't wait for it, though. It's well worth the $50 they charge for it.
Do you have two machines? If so, you can download Vembu Storegrid personal edition for free. It would allow you to setup your 2nd machine as a backup server and then it does bit-level backups similar to what Carbonite does.
Buy a USB backup drive (under $100). Online, buy Acronis True Image software and download/install it.
The backup drive will attach to your PC by USB. Acronis will make an “image” of your entire drive, and will also provide a recovery disc in case of emergency (you’ll need a blank CD). Acronis is easy to use and safe. My drive of 76Gb with about 55% used takes 1 1/2 hours to do a complete backup. Incremental backups depend on how often I do them. You can also access the “image” on the backup drive and port files back to your hard drive should you lose or damage one.
It’s the best backup solution I’ve found.
If you are looking for online backup, try Jungledisk.
I also use NTI Shadow to sync my data to an external Firewire drive.
Carbonite is supposed to be a good program, though. It is probably choking on a file that is in use and constantly changing. Try limiting your backups to data directories. Backing up the entire “Documents and Settings” hierarchy will often include files that will cause your backup software to choke.
Need a file you deleted just go to that directory in the Mozy directory select copy and go paste it where you need it.
Mozy is $50 or $60 a year for UNLIMITED personal backup.
We're networked in the house so I just backup other PCs to a shared backup directory on the Mozy PC and they're backed up automatically as well because I specify the shared directory to be backed up as well.
If there is a fire I figure $50/year for remote, automatic, safe backup of all our our digital pictures and data ia a good deal.
If you needed a full restore I think they'll burn DVDs for you for a price.
Be warned their tech support sucks. It took a week or so to get them to figure out that a client's new PC was not the old one but that we wanted the old data preserved - not just overwritten. Sigh.