Carbonite Support > How Long Does it Take to Back ...

How Long Does it Take to Back Up to the Cloud

  • This article is for Windows only

Summary:

How long does it take to back up to the cloud?

Solution:

The length of time it takes to back up to the cloud depends entirely on a number of factors. The two most important are:

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

Your Backup Size

Carbonite Safe Server Backup includes a built-in backup size estimation tool. To estimate your backup size:

  1. Create your backup set.
  2. Choose the files and folders you wish to back up.
  3. Save your backup set.
  4. Within the Backing up section, click Estimate Backup Size located beneath the file/directory tree structure.

Estimate Backup Size displays the size of your Full, uncompressed backup. The actual upload size can be much smaller if you enable compression in the Advanced backup settings section, depending on the type of data to be compressed. Incremental and/or Differential backups will have a smaller backup size.

Your Upload Speed (Bandwidth)

The length of time it takes to back up your data to the cloud is also based on your upload speed. It is always a good idea to determine your upload speed. It is common for the actual speeds to differ greatly from the speed advertised by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Speeds can vary based on a number of factors, including time of day.

To test your bandwidth, you can use a third-party speed test application or a website.

Bandwidth vs Backup Size

This chart estimates how long it will take to upload different amounts of data with common office connection types.

Cable/DSL bandwidth varies greatly by area and by provider, so always check your actual speeds to see where you fall on this chart.

Connection Type Upload Speed Upload 1 GB Upload 5 GB Upload 10 GB Upload 25 GB Upload 100 GB Upload 500 GB
Cable/DSL(slow) 1 Mbps 2.4 hours 12 hours 1 day 2.5 days 10 days 50 days
T1 1.5 Mbps 1.6 hours 8 hours 16 hours 1.7 days 6.6 days 33 days
Cable/DSL(fast) 5 Mbps 30 minutes 2.4 hours 4.8 hours 12 hours 2 days 10 days
Fiber Optic 10 Mbps 15 minutes 1.2 hours 2.4 hours 6 hours 1 day 5 days
T3 45 Mbps 3.2 minutes 16 minutes 32 minutes 1.3 hours 5.3 hours 1.1 days
OC3 156 Mbps < 1 minute 4.5 minutes 9 minutes 23 minutes 1.5 hours 7.5 hours

If you have an unstable or slow internet connection, we recommend not using the Backup to Cloud operation. A Backup to Cloud operation creates a dependency between the backup and upload operations. Therefore, any performance issues in the upload operation will quickly become bottlenecks for the backup operation too. To avoid this problem, perform a Backup to Disk first, followed by an Upload to Cloud once the backup is complete. You can also use the Backup to Disk and Cloud option, which will begin the upload immediately after the backup to the disk completes.
Feedback