Carbonite Safe is a personal cloud backup solution offered on pricing tiers to backup a single computer to multiple computers, to an insfrastructure consisting of endpoints and servers. Users of the former Mozy product (an online data backup service which allows users to back up their hard drive and, in the event of a computer catastrophe, perform a full restore of all files) are migrated to Carbonite Safe. Mozy was acquired by Carbonite from Dell in March 2018.
$83.99
per year
DiskStation
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
DiskStation is a line of network-attached storage (NAS) solutions from Synology headquartered in Taiwan.
Mozy Pro is a great fit, especially for small businesses that don't want to pursue a very large number of licenses, and don't have many TB of data to backup. The price per user is reasonable, and well within the budget of smaller businesses needing workstation backup solutions. For larger enterprises, there are other products that provide a lot more storage and better performance. We found Code42's product to be better for larger data backup needs.
The Synology DiskStation is well suited as a NAS solution, easy enough to mirror a Windows file server shares setup. Access to the Hyperbackup utility eliminates the need to purchase a tape backup solution. A portable USB drive can be used as the initial backup target. For air gap purposes can connect Hyperbackup to the various cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, GCP to copy backup data there. Utilizing it as a backup solution has also been great, instead of purchasing a tape solution, tapes and an offsite tape repository. Active Backup for Business is another excellent backup utility for physical servers, VMWare virtual machines, etc. Restoring files is fairly intuitive. Until Synology introduced the dual controller setup, using it as a SAN was less appropriate as there was occasional downtime when the controller had an issue but this was less important for the scenarios we were using it for. It would be more of a concern if we had used it for things that require more robust uptime requirements. Overall we are happy with the features of the Synology DiskStation.
Performance Settings: Mozy can be configured to run very smoothly in the background with minimal performance degradation. It provides network bandwidth throttling, backup speed, and backing up only when idle option. From my own experience I usually do not notice any performance degradation when Mozy is running. Of course a good network or Internet connection is vital.
Restore: file restoration is simple and intuitive. The user can restore logical backup sets (e.g. all photos) or file based (select the folder or file you want restored). Files and folders can be restored with the latest version or earlier version. Rename and overwrite options provide further flexibility.
Sync: with Mozy you can sync file across multiple devices including mobile. Access to your corporate files via smart phone is a secure manner is very useful.
Synology DiskStation offers lots of options for creating links to share files or request that some uploads files. It makes it really easy to just share a link that can have an expiration or a set number of times it is accessed.
We always had enough storage on our Synology DiskStation, we never had to worry about something being too big to upload or share.
Love how you can create folders that are shared and also have some that are private. This makes it so easy to have shared collaborations with coworkers or clients, but also allows you to have a private place to save things that only you need.
I would like to see backups for programs that I have installed on my machine. For instance I use Adobe CS6 and MS Office among other things. Instead of having to reinstall all these programs on my new machine, I would love for Mozy to be able to save the programs somehow and I can restore them as they were on the old machine with the same almost one-click process that I use to restore files. Basically like Time Machine, but for Windows.
While BTRFS is a more advanced file system than ext4, it also is in a perpetual state of development, with many features not fully functional and a plethora of bugs. Synology has managed to overcome many of these limitations by placing BTRFS on top of a LVM, but there are much better file systems that Synology could have used, such as OpenZFS.
DSM's built-in backup software, HyperBackup, while robust, oftentimes runs into issues. Specifically, backups can be working fine for months or years, and then suddenly the backups will fail. Sometimes these failures can be resolved, but oftentimes the backups need to be completely restarted. Fortunately, even when the backup fails, the existing backups are still accessible, it is just that new backups can not be performed.
The underlying Linux OS provides significant benefits, but also adds a fair amount of complexity. Most of that complexity is wonderfully hidden by the DSM interface, but when certain problems arise, delving into the Linux command line is not out of the question.
Perhaps the biggest issue with Synology DiskStation is Synology's support. The issue isn't that the support is bad, but it can be frustratingly slow when dealing with a major issue. Synology does have a very active community that is always willing to help, but nothing beats first-party support.
For the clients we have using this service, we fully plan to renew the subscription. However, that may change as our client's business grows and they have a need to add visualization and other server types to their environment
As long as Synology give us support for our hard drivers we will not change. I know Synology has now forced their hands to buy their own hard drivers and their new line of products. But if we still have support for old hard drivers from other manufacturers then we will still use Synology Nas. Otherwise we change manufacturers
Out of all the vendor we deal with they are one of the best when it comes to customers service. Reliable,you can reach them by telephone easily, Great overall can not say anything to the contrary. Usibility is excellent. I recommend them highly whether you need a simple backup ofr more complex for servers etc.
The Synology DiskStation is easy to set up and manage. The interface is clean and features are well documented. These units are reliable and can be set up to do scheduled integrity checks so failures can be mitigated before they halt business operations. The available packages for expanded roles makes these devices versatile.
I usually find what I need to know by looking in the Carbonite knowledge base online. We haven't had any major problems, usually we just need clarification on a point or more details about a feature so we look it up. We haven't had to call in for help in quite awhile.
Unfortunately, the one time I've had to reach out to DiskStation support, it did not go well. My NAS appliance wasn't appearing on the network, and no matter what the support team tried, they could not get it back online. Instead of offering to send me a new unit, they told me to go buy a new one - obviously, this was a disappointing response and not very eco-friendly either! Fortunately, through some internet research of my own, and some ingenuity, I figured out I could restore my NAS to factory settings by removing all the drives and resetting. Only then did I realize I had a bad disk. I had to experiment for a while to figure out which one it was. Once I had done that, though, I was able to get the latest DiskStation loaded back on, no thanks to the DiskStation support crew. If notifications were rock solid, I suspect I would have caught the bad disk before it because an OS problem, but I never received a bad-disk notification.
Carbonite Safe is a great solution for startup entities. It ranks nicely with Acronis and Carbonite Server Backup. Carbonite Safe is very good for backing up workstations including home computers. This is a good solution for home office users. Acronis does image level backups better than Mozy / Carbonite Safe whereas Barracuda Backup is a much more expensive (but worthwhile) investment. Barracuda Backup includes a physical BDR appliance.
Synology DiskStation packs a punch with the latest and greatest feature set which goes above and beyond many other vendors. It allows for a turn-key solution to cover almost every use case in the SMB market leaving other vendors behind.
