Easy, Unlimited and Secure Online Backup with Carbonite
Having an off-site backup of you data is always an essential part of a solid data backup strategy. So far we have covered several Free Online Storage services that have limited amounts of space available. The free solutions might be good enough for a lot of users, but the power PC user requires more. Today we’ll take a look at the subscription service Carbonite.
Installation is quick and easy. Just download the Carbonite application from the website and install. The Desktop is refreshed during the install but there is no system restart required.
Carbonite will show a welcome screen advising it is ready to use and show the Taskbar icon.
Next will be a information center or tutorial type screen. Carbonite will automatically backup the more important directories such as Documents and email. If there are specific files needing stored we can manually add them.
From the Taskbar you can access the Info Center where we can view the progress of a backup, restore files, or change different settings such as the backup schedule.
If you kicked off a large backup and need to use a program requiring a lot of bandwidth just simply pause it.
Carbonite integrates with Windows Explorer to easily navigate and find files. This is nice if you want to verify certain data is backed up or if you need to recover a few files.
For this example I simply did a drag and drop of 2 files from the Carbonite drive. You receive a pop up message indicating success.
If you need to find and restore large amounts of lost data simply kick off the Restore Wizard. Everything will be restored back to the original location for your account or multiple users accounts.
Conclusion
Currently I am still on my free 15 day trial period with Carbonite, but I am 100% sure I will be purchasing a year subscription. Scheduling, backup, and recovery of data is extremely easy with simple to follow wizards, even more advanced options are straight forward. You are allowed unlimited space for backup for what is a very reasonable rate ($49.95/year).
Download Carbonite With 15-day Trial
Editor's Note: This is a review of a non-free service. This is not a sponsored review and we make no money from clicks or signups, we just happen to like this product. We believe in full disclosure and will not recommend something without having personally used the product.
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You said, "Having an off-site backup of you data is always an essential part of a solid data backup strategy." But I back up to an external hard drive. Isn't that just as good?
Gene:
Backing up to an external hard drive only solves some problems. Not problems like flood or fires. Physical threats in the area of your machine.
@ Gene
Is your external drive under the same roof as your PC? If so, a fire (or other localized disaster) won't be very kind to your main files, or your backup files.
To Gene Thomas' comment:
Gene, an external drive backup is smart, but what about fire, theft, or even damage to the backup? Having an alternate plan is always good. I used to burn cd's and DVD's weekly and then put them at a location out of the house, in addition to my BU. I even use a 32 GB Flashdrive and put it in a "fire proof" safe. I all depends how much you could lose if you lose your data, what it means to you.
If you store it off-site, it would be almost as good. The on-site disk would need to be backed up every hour or so and taken off-site at the end of the day. You would bring back the off-site one every day or have a number of external Disks that you rotate.
I've done my research and I think Mozy is the best.
I used to have a couple of online BU's, back when the interwebz were in their adolescence. Back before MS bought hotmail, in fact. Don't remember who teh provider was, this far along, but somewhere along the way I canc'd the credit card it was tied to and lost my (then MASSIVE) 50mb pr0n collection.
I do ALSO remember, way back when, there were also a plethora of free or relatively inexpensive online storage sites, all of whom eventually went teh way of teh wholly mammoth. Mostly because of poor business acumen/practices. Anybody gat a compelling argument as to why I should think the same thing will not happen to Carbonite?
At present time Carbonite will not back up any external USB or Firewire drives you may have attached to your computer. My main reason for purchasing a subscription was to back up photos and video stored on external drives. I spent a lot of time looking at Carbonite's website and could find no reference about this. So I ended up adding 2 1Tb drives internally to store the items I wanted backed up on-line. The program is very easy to use and seems reliable. Just know what your buying and do your research a little better than I did.
I personnaly use Amazon S3/Jungle Disk, and I have to say it's really, really cheap and reliable.
Moreover, Jungle Disk appears like a regular drive in Windows, which a) seems somewhat safer and b) let you handle you backups with whatever app you want (lots of them out there).
Did I say that you store you data on Amazon's servers? I don't see them going out of business any time soon…
Amazon S3 + JungleDisk FTW. JungleDisk is $20, and the storage space at Amazon is CHEAP. While these others may go poof into the cloud of has been providers you can be sure that Amazon will be around for a long time.
I have a combined TB between all my drives - mostly movies and tv shows. Is this truly "unlimited" in that I could pay 50 a year to stick all that up there? I've been trying to figure out what to do with the chunk of my data that isn't backed up currently.
Hi Matt, it would take a long time to upload 1 TB, I'd be worried about breaching my provider's AUP. Does anyone know if Carbonite can sensibly and intelligently throttle the uploads?
My personal view is the 'replaceable' media files like movies and TV don't belong in a regular backup schedule. Privately made media, most commonly photos I guess, do.
Thanks Trinbin,
Yeah, that's why I don't back it up now. Honestly, I don't have a thing on my hard drive that's "irreplaceable" just some pics that are all up on some photosite anyways. I have 1 TB of storage with all my media and a 150GB raptor with my OS. A 300 GB external is where I keep all my photos, docs, and audio that I would ever need again. It would take forever to upload all that and forever to download it again. I keep my total combined up/down bandwith under 50GB a month right now to stay off ATT's radar. Definitely would draw their attention then!
I'm thinking about adding a TB drive once they hit that "magic" $100 price - will probably back up my storage locally then.
I've tried a couple other online backups, but none of them worked with the lightness and ease of Carbonite. It has never failed me. After using it with success for a year a home, saving me from a hard drive crash and also a few accidental file deletions - my boss had me install it on all the company's machines. Just in the nick of time - his drive crashed a couple of weeks later, and critical company files were protected from being lost to oblivion. He's a happy camper.
We love Carbonite. It's so easy to use, that I installed it on my family PC many months ago!
I use Mozy as well on my laptop — but that's because I'm cheap. I only back up documents that compress well and don't have pictures on my laptop that need backing up. On the family PC, however, we have tons of family pix, so I pay for and use Carbonite's wonderful service.
I used Carbonite for a year, but ended up dumping it. Uploading 100s of GB of photos took over two weeks. Way to long. I add about a GB of photos to my collection every week. Carbonite just can't keep up using 1024 MB DSL.
Thanks for the great information. Having an off-site backup is essential in the photography business.