Categories: Services

Does Carbonite Online Backup Really Work?

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If you live on your computer it only makes sense that you’ll want to back it up with something like Carbonite. It’s long been a piece of sit-com or rom-com fodder that someone loses an important file from their computer and that starts off a string of events that becomes the basis for a bad day of theirs.

But in the near future they won’t be able to use this as a plot point because audiences won’t connect with it. Everything will be backed up in “the cloud” and if your computer crashes all you’ll do is get a new one and have all your files at your fingertips. So does Carbonite bring this technology to you today?

Overview
The name Carbonite is a nod to the Star Wars lovers out there, as it was the stuff that Han Solo was frozen in. This gives the impression like you are storing your data, the way Han Solo was encased and then able to be unfrozen later. It paints a pretty good picture of what their service does. It’s like backing it up, and then accessing it at a later date as needed.

The Claim
Carbonite claims that “your life is on your computer” and they’re not too far off. More and more people are putting their personal information online, and on their computer. It’s got all of your important documents, all of your pictures that you’ve taken and transferred off of your camera, all of your music and movie files, and even just little notes you’ve written to yourself in the form of to-do lists or what you plan on doing for the long term.

The Hype
Cloud technology is getting more and more common these days, and it will probably continue for many years to come. It just makes sense not to have your files backed up on a local machine, because so many things could end up happening to it. Fire, theft, the Blue Screen of Death. If all of your important data is on there, it isn’t hype. It can really ruin your day if you lose things that were crucial for work, or were pictures you can’t replace.

The Cost
The online version of Carbonite is $60 a year, and gets you unlimited storage space to back up all of your files. This makes the ordering process very easy, because you don’t have to try to decide among different price points and different tiers that offer various storage caps. With this you just choose how many years you want to stay on for, 1 to 3.

The Commitment
They’ve tried to make the user interface as friendly as possible, so that there isn’t a lot of learning process here, you just get signed up, download the software, click Run, and it walks you through the backup process. Like most software out there it’s designed to do the work for you, and that’s just what this does. Once you’ve got your initial load of files stored, it keeps things current for you, so you don’t have to continually be updating it.

Evaluation
This is a great service to use, especially if you travel a lot, or change computers a lot, or are always upgrading your computer to the latest technology. It makes it so you don’t have to transfer files from one computer to another, you can just access it online in the cloud. Users have noted that it’s helped them recover files that they thought were lost, and the overall consensus is that this provides enough peace of mind to justify the price. Even if you never end up needing a file you’ve backed up, knowing that it’s all stored remotely lets you get on with your life and your work without stressing over losing it.

How Does It Compare?
These days it’s getting harder and harder to lose files permanently, because a lot of it is already stored in the cloud. Gmail is one prime example. It stores all of your emails, and all of the attachments in those emails on Google’s servers and you can access them from anywhere. But they do have a limit to how much storage you get, and don’t make it especially easy to upload things in bulk, and aren’t a viable option for backing up your computer. With Carbonite there are no limits to how much you can store, and as you create new files on your computer it will automagically back it up for you.

Final Carbonite Review

Carbonite is a pretty great deal, and very user friendly. It works to backup all of your files, important ones and even the not-so-important ones. With unlimited storage, it only makes sense to back it all up. You never know when you’ll need a file you didn’t think was important. For the price, it’s pretty amazing that they are able to offer no limits to the amount of files you

can protect. Most competing services are stingy with their allotments, and put limits of X amount of gigabytes. When you’ve got heaps of files you don’t want to worry about how much space they take up, you just want them stored.

By utilizing the cloud technology, they can store your files virtually, in the cloud. This means that they’re not confined to one hard drive, so you don’t have to worry about some catastrophic calamity hitting a giant server room. If one server of theirs goes down, you’ll still be able to access your data.

Our Recommendation
You get a 15 day free trial with no credit card required so we say why not? This lets you try out completely, to see if it’s what you’re looking for without having to provide your billing information, so at the end of the trial you aren’t automatically urged for using it. Of course, their reasoning is if you get enough of your files saved you will want to pay for the year instead of having to re-upload them somewhere else. They also are banking on their service being good enough that you’ll stay on.

Official Website: Carbonite

What do you think? Does Carbonite work or not?

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View Comments

Phyllis DeFalco says:

July 8, 2013 at 11:45 pm

Even though I do need backup as I work from home with a copy writing business. And though I have nothing bad to say about this company; I am fairly confident with it. The only thing that I can suggest is in case they go bust; make sure you have an alternate backup system. There are no guarantee's no matter what they tell you.