Carbonite – I love this service

The more photos I take with my digital camera, the more frightened I am of something happening to this old cranky computer causing me to lose them.

We experimented backing up my important files onto Jeff’s computer or onto an other hard drive, but the fact is that they are both in the same house so if there is a fire or a break-in – all copies are gone.

I could upload them to my server, but I don’t have that much free space. I could burn them to CD’s but when I tried doing that before, by the time I got around to it, months had passed before my last back-up.

I heard commercials for Carbonite on Sirius for months before I finally tried it. What it is – its a service that is constantly monitoring your computer. You can set what files or directories you want it to back up and it works in the background keeping a copy on their system.

When you first sign up, you can do a free trial for 15 days. It took over a week for it to upload all the files I wanted backed up to their system before it was switched to maintenance mode. You need a high speed internet connection that is always on to get this to work well. You can let it back up every single file on your computer if you want – size is no restriction!

It is free for you to restore files any time you want. It makes a virtual drive on your computer with the same file structure so you can browse and restore, or if you buy a new computer, you can go through your online account to restore files. All your files are encrypted when they leave your computer so the data transfer is safe.

It has never slowed down my computer or my connection, and they guarantee that it won’t. It constantly searches for new or altered files on your computer to back-up. If you use it on a laptop, anytime you connect anywhere it will resume your file back-ups.

I like the peace of mind knowing my files are backed up, so that that my free trial is ending, I purchased a year of their service this morning. It’s only $50 a year. Way worth it if you ask me.

Use this link to download a free 15-day trial subscription to Carbonite, and get an extra free month of service when you buy: http://www.carbonite.com