Carbonite

Ever had the PC just give up the ghost on you when you needed some important data real bad? Carbonite’s Online PC Backup Online PC Backup — always on back-up allays the fears from such nightmares. Installing the software is easy enough. I just popped in the installation disk, created an account, and answered some security questions.

Carbonite started to upload my files located under “Documents and Settings” folder to the Carbonite server located in the United States — this it does using a secure tunneling protocol to ensure data privacy of the user. To add other folders for back-up, I just have to right-click a folder I want to protect and choose “back up” under the Carbonite sub-menu. It’s that simple.

But beware the slow process: The initial archiving of the 2.5GB worth of data files I had residing on my PC took about 26 hours to get zipped across to Carbonite’s server. That said, the speed of the backup process depends on the upload speed of the Internet connection. Good thing the process didn’t slow down my PC’s performance to a crawl. Fortunately, subsequent back-ups by the program were very fast.

Still, what if my PC had crashed? I would just have had to go to Carbonite's website — using a new PC because that would not be stuffed with files — and logged into their system. From there, it would have been a simple case of follow the instructions to restore all the data.
And even if I had accidentally deleted my files and the recycle bin had been cleared, all I would have had to do was double click the Carbonite Back-Up icon, searched for the file I needed, and right clicked to restore.

That’s it, I would be back in business. It goes without saying that the fastidious among us, who
diligently park copies of our files to the office network or to an external hard disk, with the help of synchronisation programs, would not find this solution very useful. However, given the fact that the program protects files automatically and the fact that it allows me to restore my files anywhere in the world via an Internet connection, gives it some merit. Having unlimited archival room or capacity online with Carbonite is the icing on the cake. But note that this is not a file-sharing facility, and users would not be able to swap files between a laptop and a desktop. That takes some shine off the service as each subscription can be used only by one PC at any one time.