Hello- Has anyone else noticed that Carbonite sends the processor utilization to over 100%? This seems to be pretty constant and the only way to stop this is if I turn off Carbonite.
Any thoughts or anyone else noticed this?
Thanks!
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.5), iMac, MacPro, Mac 128, Newton, Apple II+, Atari 2600
I do apologize, I did not mean to imply that you said that. When doing research, I found that a lot of people had issues with Carbonite / iPhoto / Restore, and the iPhoto Library has a terrible structure if other applications want to work with it through the directory rather than through the application (like a plug-in).
I'm guessing that until Apple adds the iPhoto Library to iCloud (no idea, just speculating), non-Apple backup companies are going to have a tough time trying to figure it out.
also: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4399404?answerId=23904775022#23904775022 < for /uninstall. Also make sure that your Carbonite subscription doesn't automatically renew & charge your credit card if you're not using the software anymore.
I beg to differ with you. I think rather then calling the iPhoto Library a terrible structure, I think a more appropriate way to define is an Apple structure which simply makes use of the features that Apple provides. That is where the online backup systems appear to drop the ball because they do not appear capable of handling those feature properly. Hence the reason why the restores are worthless.
Allan
clever.leigh wrote:
1) Delete the backup on the Carbonite servers (you'll need to send an email to customer care to do this).
This isn't really much of a solution, since doing so would require that I have to re-upload my entire backup. In that case I would just switch to another cloud backup service; the only thing keeping me with Carbonite is the fact that I already have all of my files backed up with them and switching to another service would require another 100GB+ upload.
I contacted customer service regarding my high CPU/battery life issues, and a technician remoted in, reinstalled Carbonite, and disabled the backup of some folders. This does seem to have made a significant difference. Carbonite is now no longer attempting to backup:
CarboniteDaemon is now no longer at the top of the Energy Usage list, although it is still up there for CPU Time (although nowhere near as bad as it was before). It still ocasionally spikes to 100% CPU usage but only for very brief periods of time.
My estimated battery life has gone from 2-3 hours back up to 8+, where it should be. I will likely wait out my remaining prepaid subscription period with Carbonite, then re-evaluate at that time what I want to do as far as backup (if I were switching right now, I would switch to Backblaze for a number of reasons, mainly a small additional cost for multiple computers, backing up external harddrives, and the use of a personal private key for data encryption).
Thankfully Carbonite support actually surprised me and managed to fix my problem for the most part. However, it is unfortunate that by default Carbonite will be struggling to backup folders that it doesn't need to and most customers will not realize what is happening.
Eriksrocks wrote:
Thankfully Carbonite support actually surprised me and managed to fix my problem for the most part. However, it is unfortunate that by default Carbonite will be struggling to backup folders that it doesn't need to and most customers will not realize what is happening.
I'm so glad this solution worked for you! I researched extensively to create & edit the 'exclusion list' that the representative used for this exact problem. For people with smaller backups, sometimes it's easier to delete & start over. In your case, if the CPU usage still wasn't recovering after making all the backup exclusions and waiting at least 3 days with the backup enabled, the next option for Support would be to start the backup over again so the index could start at 0.
There are a number of online backup providers that all offer great features, it's all about finding which one works for you & your computer.
I do apologize, the word "terrible" was a bad choice. If I were a non-Apple developer trying to work with the contents of the iPhoto Library for the purposes of incrementally backing up, it would present an interesting and challenging problem to solve, not a 'terrible' one.
In my opinion the iPhoto Library being structured as a relational database is brilliant, the Mac OS handles it well and putting it all into a package makes it easy for users to open and understand it without having to know the details. Relational Database for iPhoto = brilliant. Programmer at first glance of library file structure = (gulp)
Hello Everyone- I'm the one that started this thread and thought it appropriate to sort of report back. Here's what has happened since the original post.
After extensive testing, almost all the online services aren't very good at either backing up or recovering. I've tried over 7 or so. The best i found for OS X was BackBlaze, but even this had its issues. I have since given up on boxed online backup. I now syncronize very critical backups on to both Amazon S3 servers (using ARC) and Dropbox. If the problem of encryption comes in so I create a disk image in disk tools, encrypt/password protect it. This is only done for very very sensitive files thus, the disk image is very small. Everything else is simply syncornized without encryption.
The biggest problem I found with the online backup services is that they gobble up disk space (this is besides recovery issues if present). They create the backup file, and then start streaming it. With a MacBook Air and SSD, this is a bad architecture. On all of them, they took up 50GB or more. This is too much for an SSD. I also found them about a week or more behind. Not really the best performance, but its something if all else fails.
Since the Macbook Air goes everywhere I do, I simply count on Time Machine. I purchased a Server Grade 5400RPM backup drive that sits in a fan cooled enclosure. The drive stays ice cold (heat is the #1 enemy of a good HD). Also, in 10.8+, you can backup to multiple HDs. Do I? Yes I do. One is the one I mentioned, the other is a NAS that is located in another part of the office. Oh, this is important, the laptop and backup drives are never in the same place unless I am with it. If something happens, I'll grab my air and run. Thus, if something happens at the office while I'm not there, no prob. If something happens while I'm at home, no problem.
This brings up a problem... what if you have a desktop machine? Then I would go with WD MyCloud and also backup to there (as well as local). Only problem is that Time Machine creates monster backups, so thse will take awhile. Doesn't matter too much because its a desktop machine and this should only be used as a secondary backup anyway.
So, moral of the story... I never felt comfortable with the online services even as a final parachute. They also took up too many resources on my MBA.
Hope all this helps.
Using 10.9.2 and latest version of Carbonite. Their software on Mac OS X is problematic. I was using Carbonite on Windows 7 and no problems. With Mac OS X 10.9.2 it is terrible. I had to contact them twice to even get it to start backing up and then it started using 100% of my Intel i5 processor. The CPU was at 85 degree celsius due to the rogue process nature of Carbonite. I contacted billing to get a refund of what was left on subscription. No refund. Truly a poor implementation and I would look at BackBlaze or some other alternative. Either way you had better look a Carbon Copy Clone or Time Machine for system image since none of these online backup services handle your system files.
Why are posting this on a thread that has been dead for 6 months?
You really should start a new thread for this.
Allan
Allan, probably because this is the most relevant thread for the issue at hand? Why would he start another thread when there is already a thread on this issue that contains lots of relevant discussion and knowledge?
As far as I know Carbonite has not made any official effort to address this - their OS X application has not been updated.
Posting at pm a thread that has been dead this long is not a way to get it noticed.
Hi Erik,
My wife and I had the same issue going on with our computers. I actually just called Carbonite 10 minutes ago and spoke with someone in tech support who was very knowledgable about the issue.
It is a known issue for them, and they can remote desktop into your computer to fix it.
At a high-level, the issue stems from that Carbonite runs itself as a system preference as opposed to a standalone application, and apparently their installer files, which appear to download themselves and update Carbonite over time, apparently interfere and corrupt how Carbonite works, over time. There's also several files that I'll call more "system" files that can corrode the way Carbonite functions and those need to be deslected from the backup. They end up deleting all of those files, reinstalling Carbonite, and deselecting a bevy of files that aren't necessary for back-up, to fix the issue.
Give them a call, and they can definitely resolve the issue, as they just did with my wife's system. We'll see how it runs a few days and weeks out, but it already looks like it's working better than before.
They also told me they are working on a stand-alone app version that is no longer a system preference for mac, which they want to release soon... but there's no timeline yet for it.
While I wish this were better communicated on their part and that you didn't have to know what to and what not to back up, as an end-user, their tech support is killer.
Well, I doubt their solution works. I had one of their guys remotely fix my machine last month but there is little difference that it made. There is something findamentally wrong with the carbonite daemon. Most of the time I keep the app on pause and switch it on briefly every couple of days or so. The surprising thing is that when I switch it on it finds upwards of 1gig of data that needs to be uploaded, even when I've only added a couple of small word docs to my hard drive - don't know how ends up being over 1 gig.
This is still a problem! Unfortunately I am locked into a one year plan. In the meantime I am using this nifty command line utility to keep the CPU usage to a minimum.
Carbonite is a piece of junk. When I tested it they were not about to restore the Aperture library in a usable state.
If you are depending on Carbonite for a backup, I hope you tested it to be sure that it able to your data in a format that you can use.
I have tested some files, but your warning makes me want to double check the most important ones. I just migrated over from Mozy because I found every file that I downloaded there was corrupted. Bleh, seems like every service has their problems.
Carbonite Takes Over My Processor!
