I've had Carbonite for several years, because I tr...

I've had Carbonite for several years, because I travel between places and having a cloud-based backup sounded wise. Until, that is, my hard drive crashed. I bought a new computer, and experienced the following problems with Carbonite.
1) Data transfer seems "throttled," though they deny this. I was using my university's internet at night for download with an Ethernet cable, not my home WiFi. Even with that, it would have taken 45 DAYS to restore my files at the rate data transfer was occurring. Carbonite claimed the slow-down was on my end. Since then, I've heard this problem from computer repair stores- that Carbonite throttles the data transfer rate for restoring a computer.
2) I was then offered a shipment of an external hard drive with my files on it, for $110. Great, I thought, since the drive is about $80, that's reasonable, considering all I'd paid in fees to Carbonite over the years. When the drive arrived, it included a note that the drive had to be returned, or I would be charged $150-$250.
3) Carbonite doesn't save any software that's been downloaded. That's fine. Unfortunately, it also doesn't save any files that are saved by some of that software. I'm a photographer, and for me backing up photo files is key. Several years of my photos were processed in Photoshop or Lightroom. Apparently, because those files were within folders for Photoshop (even though they weren't owned by Photoshop or part of PS software), Carbonite didn't back them up. That's years of my work gone.

I ended up restoring my files by taking my old computer to a repair store and having them pull the old files off the hard drive. I'm now backing up to an external hard drive each week. When my current contract with Carbonite expires, you can bet that I won't be renewing.