Protect Your Valuable Data With Carbonite

by erin on January 5, 2011

Personal computers are taking on bigger and bigger roles in peoples lives. From the early days, they have contained important documents and financial records. Today they often also contain collections of digital photographs, books, and music. In a few years, they may contain whole libraries of movies. The loss of this stored data could be a catastrophe but most people are not very good at backing up important files. Carbonite provides a possible solution to this problem.

Carbonite operates a web-based online backup system. Its operating principles are very simple. When someone subscribes to the service, it installs a client program on the computer to be backed up. The client then selects files to be backed up, encrypts them and sends them over the Internet to the Carbonite data center. It is stored using RAID 6 arrays, meaning that the data can be recovered even if one or two drives should fail. It runs on current models of Macintosh and on systems running recent versions of Windows.

The design is to back up files that contain user generated content, not all of the files on the system. The client attempts to identify which files should be backed up. The user can modify the selections by adding or deleting files from the backup list. The user can also control at the directory level rather than the file level.

The initial backup will process all of the selected files. After the first one is done, the client will automatically check for changes to any of the files on the backup list. It will incrementally backup any files that have changed or new files that are added to directories being backed up.

Since the backup is done over the Internet, the system must be online for it to proceed. Backup performance is normally good with broadband connections but it could be a problem for dialup systems. Users with data transfer limits on their online connections such as cellular or satellite connections may need to consider whether use of Carbonite as it may cause them to go over the limit. A very strong encryption is applied to user data before it traverses the Internet so security should not be a problem.

When it is necessary to restore files either because they have been lost or the computer they were on has been replaced, the user can request a restore operation from the web site. Then either all files or selected files will be copied over the network to the system that requested them. Any needed directories will be built. The product also supports a remote access facility that will allow a subscriber to retrieve selected files onto a computer that is not running Carbonite.

Carbonite provides several key benefits. One is that once it is installed, it is fully automatic. The big problem with many backup methods is that they require user action which frequently doesn’t happen. There have been a number of computer disasters caused by the loss of data that was not backed up. Another advantage is that the home version provides unlimited backup of one computer for a reasonable annual fee. It should also be noted that this service does require any special hardware, just a computer with an Internet connection.

Anyone with valuable data on a computer should consider using Carbonite online backup software. It is reliable and easy to use. Most importantly, it is automatic once it is installed.

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