The point I was trying to make was that previous SmartPhone/PDA/Tablet manufacturers focused 90% features 10% user experience and because of that those devices always failed to gain widespread traction. Apple's also demonstrated already a few times that even missing features (e.g. Copy & Paste, no custom apps in early iPhone) won't get in the way if the user experience turns out to be amazing.

Overall, I think it's easier for people to deal with missing features than user interface quirks or an inconsistent user experience, but you are right, if it doesn't have at least a good set of capabilities then it's going to fail no matter how beautiful it is.

Not sure I can completely agree. If Apple came out with the most amazing feature that could read your mind to type and initiate commands, but only had a notepad app, it would be a failure. For me, I am 60% features and 40% user experience. I can deal with some user quirks as long as the device overall made my life easier. So far Apple has had a good balance of features and usability, but the iPad fails on the features side. I think people expect more from Apple now after such a a strong run from previous products.

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Thanks for posting your experience… for a company who normally seems to be quite up-front about their shortcomings, the fact that they haven't publicized this is really surprising. It would seem to be in their best interest to do so. Much better that they tell everyone now vs. only telling people when they're in the nightmare scenario of wanting to restore their backup and finding out only then that it is corrupt.

It seems to me that CrashPlan knows this is an issue, they know that it only affects files stored on a certain location/server in their environment, and as a result, they must know which customers have backed up data to that location during the time that the bug was present. Why not just send a notification, with an apology, and instructions for correcting the issue?

Saying that it only affects .004% of the files backed up isn't adequate… what if that .004% was a priceless home video or unrecoverable family photos? I think we all realize that mistakes will happen and that's why we back up to more than one location, but dealing with unanticipated mistakes vs. those you know about and choose not to disclose are two very different things.

Sitting on the grenade and hoping it doesn't blow up just doesn't seem like an intelligent strategy here. If Nik's blog really captures all of the details as they occurred and there isn't any other part to the story, from all of my own experiences with CP (which have been truly great), I'm very surprised that this is how they've handled it.

I'm hoping that CP chooses to respond publicly as I still remain optimistic that this version of the story isn't entirely true and not as bad as it sounds. I'm willing to give them that much credit after my own great experiences with them, but from Nik's telling of the story, it's pretty bad.

Now, what I heard from the CrashPlan team is that new and existing CrashPlan customers do not have anything to worry about as this issue was fixed a while ago and that there is a continuous backup verification process going on so if some how you do have a messed up file in your backup, it will, or rather should have already fixed itself.

Just to be sure however I decided to restore all the files from a CrashPlan backup archive I had laying around that had been created a year ago from a computer I parted with in May and didn't have any file corruption issues. I'm going to try restoring some of my other backups and if I see any problems I'll let everyone know. If anyone else has seen this issue, please post your comments here to let us know.

Your note however made me think of a great blog post I had read recently from Joel Spolsky entitled "Let's stop talking about Backups" (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/12/14.ht... Joel makes a great point that if your data is important to you, you shouldn't be thinking about just backing up, but you need to be thinking (and testing!) your ability to restore. I know we all pay money to backup services like CrashPlan so that we don't have to think about that, but it's a good point. Until you have done at least one restore how do you know it really works? All to often we wait to test out backups on the day our hard drive dies and that's probably not the day to do our first test of our backup system if our data is really that important!

More details at http://try-dot-ch.blogspot.com/2010/03/crashplan….

Like a sheep, I believed all of their advertisements that "my entire computer" is backed up. Every carbonite ad I ever heard specifically mentions photos and important work documents. I assumed my files were protected whenever the carbonite icon told me my file backup had just been updated. I was a very happy customer…..until my hard drive crashed.

After replacing my hard drive, I was very glad I had paid for carbonite so I could restore everything. I had some trouble getting the restore process started, but eventually it seemed to kick on and I went to bed. The next morning I had a few old files back on my desktop, which was a good sign. But the carbonite restore log said it was 100% complete, and the "My Documents" folder was empty, except for a few other empty folders. Except for a few things I had saved to desktop, my computer is 99% LOST!

I was hoping this was a simple fix, so I called customer service. The tech support person was Conor. He didn't go out of his way to be rude, but he was like SNL's negative portrayal of unhelpful IT people (Nick Burns, your company's computer guy). He had no tact or sympathy in informing me that carbonite had not backed up the vast majority of anything important on my computer and I may have lost years of family photos, work, etc. He gave me a lot of computer jargon about the glitch that it appears that the "My Documents" folder wasn't backed up by carbonite because it was not in the usual location. I had to interrupt him to tell him that the words under the logo were "Simple. Backup." and that I don't know all the computer jargon he was saying, just that I paid for my entire computer to be backed up. He assured me that carbonite "technically worked" because my desktop was restored but he had "never seen before" why it didn't back up my other files.

I tried to remain calm while I was digesting the fact that I may have actually LOST EVERYTHING (and this guy could care less). I was asking him what they could do to fix it and he mentioned maybe a refund. I told him I didn't want my money back, I wanted my files back. Finally he said he's just tech support he can't help me with anything else. I asked him if I could speak to someone in management and he told me to look for the email address for Jeff Robinson, the Customer Service VP in the followup email from this tech support call.

I don't know what to do. What CAN I DO? I have been royally screwed over by Carbonite. Even the specific files that are not blacklisted (photos, word docs, etc) were not backed up. Feel free to reply here or look me up on facebook. I emailed Jeff but haven't heard back. I have important work projects and presentations coming up that may be doomed. This is like a nightmare. What a false sense of security carbonite sells.

you said " I think if you run tests on Mozy or any other backup service, you will be able to observe bandwidth limits".

Yes, you are right. But the problem is, that I have only 2.6 GB of backed up data and still you limit my upload bandwidth to 512 kbps. I don't know why.

I tried to ask this question your support. But as we all (or at least your customers) know, Carbonite support is crappy. Believe me, I tried it. I either get an answer that contradicts your own KB articles or no answer at all. My personal opinion about your support staff: They don't know their own products at all.

To make my point clear:
I understand and accept bandwidth limits as communicated in your KB article #1140. But PLEASE stick to your own rules.

All in all I'm still quite happy with CrashPlan, but I can identify with the experience above re: troubleshooting complicated issues.