Online backup finally makes cents
One of the hardest parts of the computer service business is facing someone who has lost a hard drive. It’s something I’ve written about before but something that never gets easier.As much as I preach about backing things up I confess I’m not great at it sometimes, either. On precious things I try to preach to have files in three places including an off-site location. (After all, what good is backing up your wedding photos from your hard drive to CD when your home is lost in a tornado or flood?)
I woke up in a panic the other night when I realized that my 99.9 percent completed book about the adoption of my children exists only on my laptop hard drive and on a USB thumb drive.
If you have an off-site backup system (I have since surmised) a whole lot of the problems evaporate. On many systems, the backup is done for you, over the Internet, while you sleep. At a certain interval, your PC kicks off a backup job, the files are encrypted and zoomed over your high-speed connection and kept safe in the vault off-site.
Of course, you may not want to back up your whole PC given the time it would take over the Internet and the cost. But, the times they are a changing.
I am playing with a new online service called “Carbonite” that offers to back up as much data as you can toss at it (within reason) for five bucks a month or $50 a year. The company’s software sits in your system tray and monitors your files. When something changes in your files it makes a copy, encrypts it and periodically sends a copy off-site using your Internet connection.
This is a great idea.
What’s the catch? Not many that I can find so far. When you sign up you get to pick what it will back up (everything, just “My Documents and My Desktop” or just what you select) and off it goes. It won’t back up system files, temp files or executables, so it’s not something you can restore your whole PC from. It’s for data.
It won’t take files larger than 2 gigs, so forget your videos and large photos. And overall it says 40 to 50 gigs is the overall limit and it reserves the right to toss piggies overboard. You can right-click on files and prevent them from ever being backed up if you’re paranoid and also specifically assure certain files are being backed up.
It works only on Windows XP and, of course, you need a broadband Internet account.
Is it worth 5 bucks a month? So far I would say absolutely. Just consider what data recovery services charge ($300 and up for the dedicated pros; $1,000 and up for the clean-room guys PER DRIVE) and backing up data never looked so cheap.
Get the details and a free test drive at www.carbonite.com and see what you think.
And, please, BACK UP YOUR DATA!
WEEKLY WEB WONDER: Consistently one of the best technical reads out there is the Red Herring. See it at http://www.redherring.com/
James Derk is co-owner of CyberDads, a computer repair firm, and computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. His e-mail address is jim@cyberdads.com
<< Home