So I have decided to backup my main hard drive using the Carbonite software and backup system. I say main hard drive because one of the biggest drawbacks of this method is that it doesn’t support external USB drives. The inital backup understandably is extremely slow. For instance after about 20 hrs, on a backup of about 24GBs it’s only 12% done. The cost is about 55 dollars a year per computer but with each computer you can have unlimited amounts of data. Whether you have 20MBs or 1TB it’s the same cost.
Once you have all of your data in the cloud, you can access it from your phone via a downloadable Carbonite application or another computer through the web interface. It’s completely secure and uses an encryption algorithm similar to what your banking institution uses.
If you computer ever crashes and you need to restore your files, you simply run the restore command and it will download all of the files you have previously stored on the Carbonite servers to your hard drive. Though as with the initial upload this might take a while.
Once all of your data is transfered to the cloud Carbonite runs in the background uploading new and changed files making the backup experience worry free.
If your computer becomes sluggish because of the constant uploads, I would suggest two things. Change the backup schedule to update your backups during a time when you’re not working. Or turn the CarboniteService off through windows services when you are actively using your computer then turn it back on when you walk away.
As anyone who has owned multiple computers over the years can attest, hard drives die, computers overheat and melt(when you are walking through security – true story), and accidents happen. By choosing a good backup system, you can work on your laptop or desktop knowing no matter what happens you have a good quality backup system in place that is always backing up your most important data.
