Better Safe Than Sorry

My computer is dying a slow, painful death.

There’s this terrible grinding sound when I turn on the power and then it just wheezes and drags as I try to do even the most basic tasks.  It’s going to die very soon.  One day, it just won’t power up, or maybe I’ll be in the middle of writing an email and it will just go dark.

But I’m not worried.  I’m not frantically getting all my important files and photos off of it before it dies because of a service I discovered a few years ago that, quite honestly, is the best thing I’ve ever purchased to take care of my data.

It’s called Carbonite.  And no, I don’t get any money by referring them to you.  I’m just so delighted with it as a user, that I tell everyone who will listen about it.

Carbonite is an automatic online backup service.  It runs quietly in the background on your computer, and automatically makes a backup of your data and files and stores them online for you.  When you’re not using your computer, Carbonite goes through the folders on your computer, finds which files have been changed since the last time it looked, and then uploads them to your account online.

Automatically.  You never have to think about making a backup onto a thumb drive, or starting a program to make you backup.  It just happens.  Constantly.  And you never have to think about it.

So when your nephew is visiting and drops your laptop and breaks it – if you have Carbonite running, you can get all your data back onto a new machine in a matter of hours.  When you get a nasty computer virus and now your computer won’t turn on and you really need those listing photos you took yesterday and stored on your hard drive?  You can go to your Carbonite account online and get them from one of the computers at work.

It’s the best $55 I spend a year, for the peace of mind that my data, my photos, my documents, the information I use to run my business – are all safe and secure.  And that it happens without me even having to think about it.  No thumb drives, no remembering to backup, nothing.  Automated backups, secure online access from other computers.  It’s a beautiful thing.

Tags: Carbonite, online backup