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Carbonite Backup Service
Carbonite Product OverviewWhen you make backups, you should always have three copies: (1) the original, (2) one local backup and (3) one remote backup. A local copy is there for convenience and safety, and for when you upgrade your computer. Typically this would be stored on a CD or DVD, or an external hard drive that can be stored in a safe place. The remote copy is for disasters like your building burning down or being flooded, or all your computer equipment being stolen. The remote copy is often ignored or neglected, because it's a hassle. Not any more, provided you have enough bandwidth (i.e. uncapped) and a reasonable speed internet connection. Backing UpCarbonite is one of a number of "cloud backup" services. Your data is encrypted and then sent to a secure server on the internet, where the data is stored until you need it. The nice thing about Carbonite is that it works in the background, backing up files once they have been changed, without you having to stop work to make a backup copy.
Recovering a fileThe other great thing is that you can retrieve the file even if you aren't at your own machine. Provided you have a good user name and password, this provides convenience (you may be at a meeting or conference and forgot to bring a particular file) and security (without the password the file is encrypted and secure). I have used Carbonite to retrieve and restore a previous version of a file that I was working on and messed up. I have also been greatly relieved to be able to restore data to a hard drive that went weird.
Recovering all filesThis is Carbonite's biggest weakness. You can either choose to restore individual files, which works great, or you can restore all files. That's it. There is no option to restore all missing or newer files, which is absurd. If your laptop dies and you restore most of your files from a different backup, and then decide to restore all your Carbonite backup files, it will download and restore files from its backup, even if those files already exist. This is a total waste of time and it means you could end up waiting for days or even weeks for missing files to be restored, and you also run the risk of Carbonite overwriting newly modified files with the original backup files. The only workaround I can think of is to restore the Carbonite files to an external USB drive, and then copy across the newer files. Alternatively you need to rummage through thousands of files and select each one that needs to be restored. Who needs backups?In the past two decades I have had 4 machines die on me. The first one took 3 dozen floppy disks to restore the backup. The second one I managed to copy the data to another hard drive after I dropped the laptop. The third one's hard drive died after 7 days so I still had the old laptop. The fourth one I cooked the hard drive and the motherboard, and I was able to restore the data from my USB HDD. In each case I would have suffered a major financial loss without those backups. Why Carbonite?I chose Carbonite because they advertise on the TWIT podcast network, and they allow you to try it for 15 days at no charge. There is also an offer code that gives you an extra free month or so. You can also get a free month by using a special URL to recommend it to your friends. So they were generous about letting me try it out, and it proved to be very easy to use. I compared it to similar services and decided that the pricing was cheaper or equivalent. And I like the simplicity of the product. Check out www.onlinecomputerbackup.eu for comprehensive reviews of 10 online backup products.
Their "Technical Support" is basic, and at times clueless, but many of the questions are answered online. They did help me with a bug where some AppData folders were causing Carbonite to overload. Presumably this is a bug that will be fixed. What about Local Backups?
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See AlsoCarbonite page on Wikipedia Wikipedia list of online backup services Top 10 online backup programs at www.onlinecomputerbackup.eu See the article on "Before You Defrag Your PC" for advice on speeding up your PC and reducing risk, and "Why Defragmentation is Needed" for a more detailed look at defrag strategies and tips. Review of Carbonite in the UK's WebUser magazine
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