Copyright © 2000-2008
by Barbara Brabec
All Rights Reserved
Barbara Brabec's World
BarbaraBrabec.com

CARBONITE:
The Best Little
Computer Backup Program You’ll Ever Find!

How to securely and effortlessly backup your home business files, e-mails, Outlook address book, financial documents, photos, music, and more over the Internet—for less than $50 a year.

A report by Barbara Brabec

IF YOU'RE LIKE MOST HOME BUSINESS OWNERS, your life probably revolves around a desktop or laptop computer you use to access the Internet, and one or both probably contains an incredible amount of data that’s vital to both your personal and business life.

Maybe you think you have a good backup program in place, but every year, 43 percent of computer users lose irreplaceable files, and 300,000 laptops are stolen annually—eye-opening statistics, to say the least.

Various national surveys have shown that data loss is caused by several things, including:

Hardware of system malfunctions (accounts for 42 percent of all data loss);

Human error (30 percent of all loss);

Software corruption (13 percent of all loss);

Computer viruses (7 percent of all loss);

theft (5 percent of all loss);

Other, including natural disasters (3 percent of all loss).

Everyone's Biggest Backup Problem

In talking with many business owners in my network, I know that many of them backup their hard drives on CDs, DVDs, tape drives, or other portable storage devices. A couple of my business friends are really on top of the situation, with daily backups done automatically to an external hard drive, but most small business owners aren’t this efficient. At best, many are probably doing backups only once a week because they’re just too busy to mess with this time-consuming task. Some put off doing full backups for even longer periods of time, while new computer users may not be doing backups at all. I’ve heard more than one horror story about writers who have lost their whole book manuscripts because they never made a backup disk, and I’m sure many people have thousands of photos and MP3 files on a computer that isn’t being backed up at all.

In fact, a Harris Interactive Survey found that three out of five personal computer users have lost an electronic file they thought they had sufficiently stored, and only one in four users frequently back up digital files, even when 85 percent of computer users say they are very concerned about losing important digital data. According to an Iomega national survey, more than two-thirds (69 percent) of home computer users and nearly half (46 percent) of work computer users personally back up their data only once a month or less often, or they never back up their data. As a result, computer users are often completely unprepared for sudden attacks by hackers, viruses, blackouts and electrical failure.

The major problem with backing up your computer to CDs, DVDs or an external hard drive is that these backups are usually stored where the computer is. So if your place burns down, is blown away in a tornado, washed away in a flood, or simply burglarized, there go your backups.

But there is such a simple solution to this problem, and it costs less than fifty dollars a year. The Carbonite Online Backup completely eliminates the need for CDs or other backup methods. It backs up all your files online—no matter how many GBs you need to back up—and it does it automatically and continuously.

FOUND: The Perfect Backup Solution for Me–
and Perhaps You, Too

I’ve always been paranoid about losing any of my writing, as well as the content on my websites, my graphics and photos, and my Outlook email files and address book. Even waiting until the end of the day to do a backup always made me nervous because, in just a few hours’ time, I might modify, add or delete a couple dozen documents, work on a book in progress, write an article or newsletter, or make changes to one or more of my websites, download and respond to various emails, and make changes to my Outlook address book.

I suffered from "backup anguish" for years, because a computer crash at 5:00 after I had been working all day, before I could backup my hard drive, would have been devastating to me. About five years ago, I found an online backup service that enabled me to back up 250 MG of my documents for $100/year, but to backup everything I wanted to protect cost more than my budget would allow. So I still had to regularly backup everything to CDs. And the partial online backup service was flawed, to boot, as it did not automatically delete files I had removed from my computer. So I had to keep a record of all deleted files and manually remove them from the online backup, which was very time-consuming. Uploading files was also incredibly slow, even with my high-speed cable connection. 

One day the program stopped working, and a little searching revealed that the company had been sold, and its backup service has been discontinued with no notice to its clients. A couple of days later, however, I heaved a sigh of relief when I heard a noted radio commentator praising the Carbonite Online Backup program. I signed up for the free trial, tested the program by backing up everything I wanted to protect, and, delighted, immediately converted to a paid annual membership. Now, for less than $50 a year, I am backing up all my document files, websites, photos, downloaded software programs and my Outlook files, automatically and continuously, all day long. I can sleep well in the knowledge that I'm never going to lose my data.

How Carbonite Works

BACKUPS. When your computer is idle, Carbonite goes to work, quietly backing up your files in the background. You don't have to do anything! When you’re using your computer, Carbonite goes to sleep. It will never cause a slow-down or interfere with your Internet connection. Mousing over the little icon in your system tray will tell you when files are awaiting backup, and when the latest backup has been completed. (See next page for detailed information about your backup options.)

INSTALLATION. Installation was incredibly simple. Carbonite installs a small application on your computer that works quietly in the background looking for new and changed files that need to be backed up. It looks and feels just like part of your computer, and is integrated with your desktop so there's no new interface for you to learn.

PRIVACY AND SECURITY. Carbonite takes data privacy and security very seriously. Before leaving your PC, all your files are encrypted TWICE twice (using the same technology as banks), and files remain encrypted on Carbonite’s secure data centers, so only you can see them. (You are even given the option of keeping your own encryption key.)

FILE RESTORATION. With Carbonite, file recovery is quick and hassle-free. If you accidentally delete or otherwise lose files, it takes just a few clicks on your desktop to get them back. If your computer is damaged, stolen or "just dies" and you lose all your files, just visit Carbonite's website from a new computer. Within minutes you'll be able to begin restoring all your files. (If you do need a little help, you can always count on online or live telephone guidance.)

RISK-FREE TRIAL. Try Carbonite FREE for 15 days. You don’t have to worry about the "fine print" that often accompanies free trials, because Carbonite does not ask for your credit card unless and until you’re ready to sign up as a paid user. At that point, you will pay ONLY $49.95/year, no matter how much stuff you need to back up. Again . . . there is NO LIMIT on backup storage—you get UNLIMITED CAPACITY for one flat yearly rate.

Carbonite's Backup Recommendations, continued on page 2

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