Late Saturday night my home PC started acting up, and when I rebooted, neither Zone Alarm Pro nor NOD32 would run. Attempting to run either just put the PC into a loop that required a reboot. Starting in safe mode without either security program (and the DSL modem unplugged) resulted in things working just fine – all of the foregoing indicating the likelihood of an unwanted addition to my collection of applications.

After several attempts to repair the XP installation, I just reformatted the C drive and reinstalled Windows, SP2, and several thousand updates. (Well, it seemed like several thousand…) Needless to say, all the data on the HDD went south. I mean, that was the whole idea!

Not to worry, though… I’ve got Carbonite in addition to other backups. I took the opportunity to allow Carbonite to run through its paces. I set it to restore the non-system files on C, and let it run. I already knew it that works well for individual files and folders.

Eight hours later I was convinced I’d never be without Carbonite or a similar program again, even with other backups operating. Everything is back exactly as it was. I did have to re-install quite a few programs, because Carbonite won’t mirror system files (at least in its present incarnation). All my photos, documents and similar files – including archived executables from My Documents – are back good as new. Just cranked ‘er up and let ‘er run – literally a three-click operation, once the system was back up and running.

Amazing!

If you don’t have a backup system in place, or if it isn’t automatic, do yourself a favor and give Carbonite a look. Just go to the site and read the FAQs. (There’s a technical FAQ, as well. These folks don’t hide anything much.)

Tell you what – even though I have most of my stuff backed up to removable media, not everything was backed up, and reloading it wouldn’t have been a three-clicks-and-watch-football operation. Despite the naysaying of some readers, online storage of my backup and my writing is worth every penny it costs. My apartment could have burned down, and the most inconvenient thing about losing the PC would have been having to order a new one, which I’m doing this week anyway. In fact, that would have been less trouble than re-installing Windows.

At 13.67556468 cents a day (USD), Carbonite’s about as cheap as any insurance you can buy, and it’s “set it and forget it.” Yes, I know you can get a USB 2.0 external drive and set it up to do automatic backups – but they’re still in the same room with the computer. What about fires or theft? If you live in Florida, as I do, what about lightning? There’s no UPS or surge suppressor (that you can afford) that will protect your system from a strike on the house wiring.

Security? Carbonite uses 1028-bit encryption. I know that’s not very secure if you have a few billion years and a couple dozen supercomputers, but It’s good enough for me.

You do need broadband.

[tags]backup, carbonite, bill webb, bill’s web, computer failure[/tags]