Carbonite

Backup, are you getting any?

If I had a penny for every time somebody said to me, “backup, what backup?” just after their system crashed, I would no doubt be writing this from a hammock overlooking a turquoise sea rather than in a study looking up into grey skies.

Everyone knows how important a backup is, but doing it is another thing.  Lets face it, it’s a headache right?  Even for geeks.

There are all sorts of different backup solutions, USB disks, CD’s/DVD’s, your other computer and online offerings.  Carbonite offers an online backup solution that you can set and forget about with total confidence.

They say that your life is on your computer and that every year 43 per cent of computer users lose irreplaceable data.  I can believe this and it’s why I actually use this system which is now also available for the Mac.

Once you install the small application it works in the background while your computer is idle looking for new and changed files.  When you’re busy Carbonite goes to sleep.  Your profiles and My Documents will automatically be marked for backup. So straight off the bat your Desktop, Emails, Favourites, Application Data, Local Settings, Photos, Music and saved files are taken care of and your Internet connection won’t suffer.

One of the greater advantages is that your data is offline, so there’s no fear of it being stolen, lost or damaged.  All data is encrypted twice before leaving your computer and remains encrypted so that only you have access.

What’s also really neat with Carbonite is the visual indication of the backup status.  Each folder and file icon now shows a coloured dot so without doing anything or opening up a backup interface you know what’s what.

Restoring of files just takes a few clicks and the process is very simple.  You can also restore files on your travels meaning that there’s no need to take your backup media with you.

The downfalls are obvious to see; it’s online so a slow internet connection will take much longer to backup.  The first initial backup also takes a couple of weeks to complete and if your computer disk fails it will take longer to restore.

You get unlimited storage for $54 / £33 per year.