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Managing Backup Policies in the Dashboard

Summary:

As a Carbonite Safe Backup Pro Administrator, you can manage backup policies for each of the Windows computers that are associated with your Carbonite account. Backup Policies are not currently available for Mac computers.

This article applies to:

Carbonite Plans Products Platforms

Core, Power, and Ultimate* (Not sure?)

Safe Pro (Not sure?) Windows

*If you don't have one of these plans, you cannot manage backup policies. Please upgrade to a supported Carbonite Safe Backup Pro plan to make these changes.

Solution:

In order to manage your backup policies please sign into your account at https://account.carbonite.com or with the button below.

Sign In

Within your account, click Manage Backup Policies to view and manage any backup policies that exist on your account.

The sections below are collapsed. Please click the section title to open / close a particular section.

Adding a Policy

You can add a new policy by clicking the Add a new policy button in the Manage Backup Policies page of your account.

In the next section, you can view the Edit a Backup Policy window and the available options for backup policy configuration.

Edit a Policy

You can edit a policy by clicking Edit next to a policy name.

After you are in the Edit a Backup Policy window, you can name the policy, set the backup defaults, backup specific folders, and exclude specific file types in the policy.

Setting a Name

Choose a name that best describes the backup policy and is no longer than 100 characters.

After the policy is named, you can select the user folders that will be backed up by default.

Selecting User Folders for Backup

Select the boxes to add folders to the backup policy. When a folder is selected, the policy selects the folders for each user on the computer.

User Folder Location on Computer
Desktop C:\Users\[User]\Desktop
My Documents C:\Users\[User]\Documents
Outlook Data (default Outlook location) C:\Users\[User]\Documents\Outlook Files
My Pictures C:\Users\[User]\Pictures
My Music C:\Users\[User]\Music
My Videos C:\Users\[User]\Videos

The options listed here only represent the folders not the type of files. For example, if you have a picture on the Desktop and only My Pictures folder is selected, Carbonite will not automatically select the picture in that location.

Backup policies automatically select the locations specified, but users can manually select individual files and folders that are outside of the default backup selections you specify.

To remove a user folder from the backup, remove the checkbox from the folder.

Selecting Additional Folders to the Backup

Specify the file paths for additional folders that you want to add to the backup policy in the text box.

Each path should be added per line. If you need to add another, click Add another to use the next text box to add another file path.

You can also use * as a wildcard to add folders that exist in multiple locations. For example, enter "C:\Users\*\Company Files\" if each user on the computer has their own "Company Files" folder in their user folder.

Excluding File Types

You can exclude multiple file types by their extension and separate them by commas.

Click Music, Pictures, or Videos to add a list of known file types for each category to the exclusion text box.

After you have configured the backup policy, click Save settings.

Deleting a Policy

You can delete unwanted backup policies.

To delete a policy, click Edit on the associated policy.

Scroll to the bottom of the policy and click Delete this policy.

You will be prompted to confirm the deletion of the backup policy.

After confirming, the backup policy will be deleted.

Changing a Policy

You can assign backup policies for each of the Windows computers that are associated with your Carbonite account by signing in at https://account.carbonite.com or with the button below.

Sign In

Within the Backup Dashboard, use the dropdown menu for the desired computers to select the backup policy that you want to apply to the computer.

After selecting a new backup policy, the changes will go into effect within 24 hours. When a custom policy is active on a computer, the option to include Carbonite's default backup selections will not appear within the Settings & controls page.

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