RealTown's RealTalk

Kathleen,

I have had carbonite for a couple of years and used it to switch over my date from a computer that was dying...it worked great but you do have to load your software and then the retreive the files from carbonite...it's well worth it! I've lost way too many things in the past because I get to busy to remember to back up. I definately recommend carbonite.

Jill Warne

Century 21 Real Estate Center

jill@jillwarne.com

new Dynamic Property Search tool and my exclusive
1-Click searches..

Dave, I checked out your site and clicked on one of the searches. I loved it! I can't think of a person who wouldn't enjoy the ease of use. I'm always getting requests for one place to find foreclosures and this would be wonderful. One place for HUDs, VA and all other bank owned properties.

I haven't been keeping up with the discussions, but where can I find the simplest way to set this up on my site?

Thanks,

Kathleen Allardyce said:
"I used a transfer program the last time I upgraded my computer, and
it did a fairly good job of restoring software, too. There were a few
programs I needed to reload from the disks, but not many. I'm
wondering if Carbonite works the same way."

I have set up a new machine by grabbing my data files from Carbonite.
In general, with a fresh machine of a fresh re-load of Windows, you
will need to install software again.

But overall, I have had to retrieve corrupted files from Carbonite
several times, usually Access databases that freeze up. It is
wonderful, because they keep ten previous versions.

For $49 per year, Carbonite is excellent....and easy, and remote. I
never deal with it. I just set it to back up everything.

Best regards,

Dirk Johnson
Partner - Operations
DomainDrivers LLC
djohnson@domaindrivers.com
703-406-4698
http://domaindrivers.realtown.com
We're an approved RealTalk/RealTown vendor:
http://DomainDrivers.InternetCrusade.com

Other users will have personal experience, but here are the answers based on the PC Mag review:

Ruth asked:

1. I know the data is encrypted, but I worry about how safe and private it is. Theoretically could someone at Carbonite view my files?

**According to the PC Magazine review, you can assign your own encryption key to make it so that no one can access your files - Even Carbonite. However, if you do that, you need to keep it safe in a couple places that you could access regardless if there were a disaster at your home or office.

2. What happens if Carbonite goes out of business? Besides finding having to find another provider, does Carbonite somehow have part of all of my data and files? That makes me uncomfortable.

**Yes, they would have your files, but no way to read them, according to PC Magazine, if you used your own encription key.

3. For those who use Carbonite or a similar program, do you still use a manual back-up or do you rely completely on the program?
 

I'm planning to continue doing a nightly backup on my external drive.

Speaking of online backups, I just googled ``Online Backup Review``, and read very detailed reviews here:

http://www.backupreview.info/category/reviews/
http://www.backupreview.info/category/our-reviews/

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Hi, everybody. Thank you for all the nice posts about Carbonite. I wanted to respond to Ruth's question about privacy. The reason we encrypt all your files before they leave your PC is precisely so that nobody else can ever see them. If we ever compromised the privacy of our users' data, it could put us out of business. So to avoid any possibility of that happening, we just simply do not store any unencrypted files ever.

If Carbonite were to go out of business, all that would be left would be a LOT of hard drives with essentially random ones and zeros. It would take an NSA supercomputer and a lot of effort to break the encryption.

As for manual backups, they can't hurt (you can never be too cautious about backing up). However, it's not going to add much in the way of safety because Carbonite's storage arrays are literally millions of times more reliable than a single hard drive. External hard drives are a good way to back up very large files, like TV shows, downloaded movies, etc. that you wouldn't mind losing if all your equipment got stolen or destroyed in a fire, etc.

Dave Friend, CEO

Carbonite, Inc.

Thanks, Dirk. Nice to know that you're a fan of Carbonite, too. My decision is getting easier all the time!

Here's the Carbonite review from PCMag

It's not the highest rated service, but for the price, the things PCMag thought it lacked aren't really going to bother me, I don't think.

I have been looking at SOS Backup, the highest rated service on PCMag. It costs $50/year for backing up 15MG. The cost differential with Carbonite is significant.

2/20/2009 @ 3:27 PM HST

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Dave Friend, CEO, Carbonite, Inc. (snip):