Carbonite

Carbonite may sound like a solution for adding more bubbles to your soda, but in fact it is a great secure online backup system. Everyone who uses a computer should be backing up their data and most just put their files on another computer or an extra hard drive in the same location. What happens if the problem is not your computer, but a fire or a flood. Carbonite for a very low price per-year takes your files and securely puts them on another computer over the Internet.

Carbonite gives users 15 days to try their product. You can download it from their website. The software that runs on your computer will not slow you down, and has run smoothly for me since I began using the product.

When you install the product, it may take several days or more to do its initial backup of your computer. This backup transfers all of your files flagged to their secure location. When you make changes or add to files, they are automatically flagged for backup (with a few exceptions including music files) and then they are sent to the Carbonite server. You can easily control what is backed up and see the status by little dots added to the corner of your icons. Another positive trait of Carbonite is that it runs on its own in the background when you don’t want to be bothered by it.

I learned about this product from friends in the Denver area as well as Leo Laporte, the Tech Guy on several of his Pod Casts. I am a big fan of this product. One note: I am not compensated for telling you about this product.

This product should not be the only tool you use in backing up your computer, if you value your data it should be part of a multi-facetted backup strategy.