As soon as I got my new PC, I bought an external disk as large as the provided internal disk, and told Vista to turn on automatic backup to the external disk. That works fine, but what happens if some event causes failure in both the PC and the external drive? Power spikes, fire, and theft are all real possibilities.
Carbonite provides automatic offset backup at a reasonable charge. It’s really automatic; you just turn it on and forget it. The documentation is very good and simple. It runs in the background and I don’t notice it at all. It only costs $4.16/month, or $3.75/month if you sign up for two years. You can get a free 15-day trial.
It’s so easy to put off doing backup; I procrastinated for years. Luckily, I didn’t lose my data, but I’ve had friends who have lost their computer’s disk and it cost them plenty of time to recover, and they lost some data permanently. I recommed both the external disk and Carbonite.
(Full disclosure: Carbonite is funded in part by Common Angels, though I am not an investor. I also like that the CEO is David Friend, who used to run ARP Instruments — I was a music synthesizer hobbyist in the early 70’s and Friend was quite famous in that area.)
Tags: backup
December 15, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Online backup-services are really useful, yes - what surprises me though, is that the one I am using (Mozy) has no size-limit whatsoever. The intriguing part is the software which decides when its time to run out and buy more disks.
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runeb
December 21, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Although this is my first time to come here,I find your site very useful,and I will come again.
January 8, 2008 at 10:50 pm
I gave Carbonite a spin, but I’m giving up on it. Carbonite might
work well enough for a typical low-impact user, but feeding it my
data area (about 200,000 files, mostly but not quite static) chokes
it and kills my machine. I may check up on it after their product
matures for another year or so.