Internet Backup

Are you ready for Carbonite? I just found out about it this weekend, and figured it’d come in handy for some of you. My guess is: (a) you have a lot of files sitting on your hard drive; (b) you haven’t backed anything up lately; (c) you can’t find the right software to do backups for you; (d) you don’t have extra storage lying around to accomodate the gigabytes of data you’d have to back up; (e) you’ve been waiting for something like Carbonite to come along. This is a utility that’ll back up your PC’s data to the Internet - a virtual hard drive in the sky!

• Unlimited storage capacity

• Automatically finds all your data files - photos, documents, music, emails, everything
• Always on - just connect to the Internet
• Set and forget - just start Carbonite and relax
• Instantly detects and backs up changed files
• Never slows down your computer or Internet
• Exclude files you don’t want to back up
• Strong encryption for super security
• Backs up approximately 2GB per day over DSL or Cable

Yes! You can back up any or all of the files on your PC, and it’s still only $5 a month. What do I have to do to back up? After you download Carbonite, you can manually select which files and folders to back up, or Carbonite can select for you. Your files are then doubly-encrypted and automatically uploaded to our secure Internet servers. You’ll never have to remember to schedule a backup. Any time you modify a file or create a new one, Carbonite detects these changes and automatically updates your backup within 24 hours.

What happens when I need to restore files? If you accidentally delete a file or folder, you can restore it with just a few clicks. If your computer crashes and you lose everything, simply reinstall Carbonite on your new or repaired computer. Carbonite will automatically go into “Recover Mode” to help you retrieve your lost files.

My friend, Jason Dunn, has been using it - in fact, he’s the one who recommended it to me. This morning, he sent me a little tip for all you would-be Carboniters:

Hey guys, I learned something about Carbonite after I published my article on it: [it doesn't] allow backups from external drives. I asked why, and [I was told that the company doesn't] want some guy with his terabyte drive array to upload all of it. I think that’s a bit lame, but then again, I’ve uploaded about 80 GB so far and [no one there is] complaining, so I still think [it's] pretty cool. [It] also [doesn't] allow backup of network mapped drives, but that doesn’t surprise me at all because someone could try and upload every hard drive on their freakin’ network. A cool workaround though is to use FolderShare to build up a set of files from multiple machines that you want to back up.

So, what are you waiting for? Download Carbonite already!

[tags]hard drive,backup,gigabytes,storage capacity,carbonite,computer crashes,restore files,lost files,internet servers,strong encryption,data files,internet backup,backup data[/tags]