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.
That was my first thought too. I have Carbonite with a cable modem and IE 7.0 and it works fine. he first time did take awhile, but the Carbonite literature warned about that. Now I never even notice it. The other question I would raise is Vista vs. XP. IIRC, there have been problems with Carbonite and Vista.
I have 54 Mbps internet speed at home and office. I don’t know how long the 3% took since it was supposed to be a set and forget process.
After a couple of days it was still at 3%. My XP configuration appears to have mystified Carbonite.