Avoid Computer Disasters

We use Macintosh computers (always bought used) at our house. They cost a little more, but we've never had a virus problem . . . ever. But we have had hard-drives die and that has created all kinds of problems. In the past we regularly backed-up our writing (books and columns), email and other data to dvd's and stored them in a safe-deposit box at our bank. It was time consuming, but it saved us loss of data a couple of times.

Now we have an external hard drive, back-up system in our office, but we also are using Carbonite — an online constant back-up of all of our data. It costs less than $5 per month and in our minds is a great bargain. Our literary agent, Steve Laube, has been using it for years and has been able to recover complete manuscripts for some of his other authors when their computers died.

It does take several days (or weeks) to back up all of your information — the time depends on your internet connection and how much data you have to back up.

What a comfort to know that all of our hard work is safe from fire, power surges, theft and hard drive deaths. You know we're into saving money, but sometimes it 

pays to spend a little to have the security of knowing you're covered for sure.

If you're not sure about buying it, Carbonite offers a free 15 day trial (we like FREE!).

Carbonite offers unlimited online backup for your home or business for only $59.00/year. Try it free for 15 days and back up your irreplaceable files automatically and securely. You don't need to give them credit card information for the free trial.

How we use Carbonite to Backup

Carbonite is designed to automatically back up most files in the Documents and Settings folder, which includes "My Documents" and "Desktop". However, some users choose to manually select files for backup, or decide to back up files that are stored in other locations. Any file or folder can be added to the backup by simply right-clicking on the file or folder and selecting "Back this up" from the Carbonite menu. Once files and folders are selected for backup, they will be continually backed up in the background so that your backup is always up-to-date.

Remote Access is really cool too!

A couple of days each week Steve takes one of our kids to AP classes at a local community college. He writes or updates our website from his laptop while waiting. Just this week (3.7.11), he needed a file from our main computer to complete a presentation he was updating. By logging in to the Carbonite website and clicking on the Remote Access tab in the upper right corner, he was able to download the 5 mb file and start using it within 3 minutes! It saves time and stress! What a great way to back-up and access information.

By the way, this was the first time we tried using Carbonite's remote access service and it was super easy to understand and use.