I walked into my office one day over a year ago and Moe Paknia was sitting at his computer.  I asked Moe how he backed up his computer. H gave me this long, serious look and said:  "like this."  Then Moe gently pushed his computer back a few inches on the desk and started cracking up. Well, that made me think that I too need a really simple way to back up my files.  So I purchased Carbonite, an automated online back-up service.

I had a hard drive failure around 6 months ago.  I started using Carbonite about a year prior to the crash.  I bought a new computer and tried to restore my data and couldn't.  I called Carbonite tech support several times and was disconnected after an hour each time with a message saying that everyone was busy and that I should call back later.  I wrote a nasty email to customer support and finally managed to restore most of my files.  A VP called me several times and finally got through.  He simply said that Carbonite was becoming so popular that they were having a hard time hiring and training enough support people.  He apologized, refunded the fee I paid for the first year offered and me a year of free service.  I told the guy that as disappointed as I was, I really wished the company the best of luck.  If it is was as simple as it seemed and actually worked, Carbonite was going to be a winner.

Fast forward to a new PC.  My new laptop had a cascading series of software failures two months ago.  I lost the ability to record a sound and later lost sound.  I couldn't play Windows Media Player files.  I tried doing a system restore and could not.  Then Carbonite stopped working and the trash can vanished from my desktop.  I bought an external hard drive, backed everything up (could I trust Carbonite?) and called tech support at Dell.  After going through over an hour of stuff on several calls, I was told that the hard drive needed to be reformatted.  I restored everything from the external hard drive, not knowing whether or not I could trust Carbonite.

Not 60 days later, I started having a similar series of operating system failures.  After getting on the phone with Dell tech support again, I reformatted and then went to Carbonite.  After starting to restore files in the morning, I left for the day.  I returned the next day and the restoration process was still going on.  I decided to go shopping as there were some really great clothing sales going on and then returned early in the afternoon.  What did I find?  Everything was restored right were it was supposed to be right down to my internet bookmarks.  All I needed to do was download certain programs that I lost.  So I lost a couple of days of productivity and a few days worth of emails (the pst file was a couple of days old), but Carbonite came through.

The service costs about $50 for a year and here is how it works:  when you create or save a file or folder with changes, a little yellow dot appears on the file or folder.  That means that Carbonite knows about the file and is going to back it up.  When the dot is green, the file is backed up.  You can run Carbonite in a low priority mode, meaning it won't back up until you have not used the computer for a while.  This way it doesn't slow anything down.  You can restore individual files or do a complete restoration.

So now I have two back-ups.  The external hard drive and Carbonite.  Why both?  Charlie Pitkin told me the other day that a family he helped purchase a house had the house broken into and all of the electronics stolen, including the external hard drive.  That is a good reason to have an online back-up service.  If there is a failure with the online service or the company goes out of business, you have the external hard drive.  Regardless of how you do it, you need to back up and you need to do it often.

Update July, 2010 - my laptop was stolen a few days ago and that really hurt.  However, the new one is having files restored as I type this thanks to Carbonite.

Comments?  Questions?  Call me at 512-293-2422.  Click to Search Austin Homes.

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