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Carbonite Safe for Mac CPU Usage

Summary:

Sometimes when looking at Activity Monitor you may see the Carbonite process using 100% or more of CPU. This article clarifies what you are seeing and what to expect overall.

Cause:

macOS calculates processor usage on a core by core basis. This is different than Windows, which simply notes the usage of the processor overall regardless of how many cores the processor has. As the overall usage varies based on the amount of processing cores the actual processor usage varies from one Mac to the next.

As an example; if a service in Mac OS X is using 100% CPU, then the actual processor utilization based on core count is as follows:

  • Dual Core (2 Cores) - 50%
  • Quad Core (4 Cores) - 25%
  • Octa Core (8 Cores) -12.5%

When Carbonite is scanning selected folders for changes the CPU usage for CarboniteDaemon in Activity Monitor can range from 70-110% normally. This is expected behavior and lasts until the folder scan completes. Once the scan completes the usage in Activity Monitor usually drops to 5-30%. The amount of time required for the folder scan varies from computer to computer, but much older computers and extremely large backups take the longest. For older computers and larger backups it is not uncommon for a scan to take in excess of 45 minutes.

Solution:

If you only have the automatic selections enabled, then there is no way to shorten the time a scan takes. Without large changes, the scan time will take reliably the same amount of time every time. If you are using resource-intense software for graphic or video editing, then you would need to use the Pause Backup option within the application to stop the scan while you work. Please note that after being paused, Carbonite will not automatically resume. You would either need to hit the Resume Backup option in the application or restart your computer for the backup to resume.

Guides:

If you have made additional selections that include other backups, duplicated files, or excess data you do not need, then you could shorten the scan time. The way the scan time would be shortened in this situation would be by navigating in the application to the excess files and folders, highlighting them, and then choosing Do Not Back Up on the right. This is most effective when excluding locations that include thousands of files. Excluding individual files does not greatly impact the scan time.

Guides:

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