When I sat down to write this article, I had approximately 166 gigabytes of music, 365 gigabytes of pictures and home video, 386 gigabyte of various software and personal documents, as well as 441 gigabytes of random videos, movies and TV shows on my main computer’s internal hard drives. Just in case “1,358 gigabytes” means absolutely nothing to you- my computer has over 45,000 folders that contain a total of about 650,000 personal computer files.

Please understand that I am not attempting to brag; a lot of real computer geeks store way more data than I do – I’m just a poser geek. My point was to let everyone know that (a) I’m a pack-rat, but more importantly (b) I would have no idea what to do with myself if I lost any of my digital data. All of the pictures and personal videos that I have taken since 2004 are digital. I can’t imagine losing all of those memories because of a stupid accident or hard drive crash.

Even worse than your hardware crapping out on you, is being victim to a natural disaster that not only destroys your computer but everything else that you own. California has had a horrible fire season this year and hundreds of people suddenly found themselves without a home. A lot of us use our computers to store not only personal images but also some of our music, emails, financial records, contact information, or other important documents. If I had just lost everything – I’m sure that I would feel a tiny bit better knowing that I could retrieve those important files and documents from my secure online backup.

It’s not just a California problem and it’s not just about fires. Pretty much any natural disaster has the power to destroy your computer. Luckily only about 7% of data loss situations are caused by some type of disaster. However, if you keep reading you will realize that there are all types of gremlins trying to ruin your files.

Average People and Data Loss

There is a very high chance that the average person will lose some or all of their digital data at one point or another. There are statistics floating around out there which claim that 32% of lost data is due to human error. Not only do we accidentally delete things, but approximately three out of five computer users have lost a file (or more) that they could have sworn was saved to the right place. However, being stupid isn’t the only thing that we need to worry about because every 15 seconds there is a hard drive out there in the world that crashes (or fails.) I’ll go ahead and note that a simple drive recovery can cost hundreds of dollars and is not guaranteed to be successful. While you’re worrying about all that; there are approximately 2,000 laptops stolen or lost every day and about 97% of stolen laptops or desktops are never recovered.

Let’s not forget about computer viruses which can corrupt or destroy your data very quickly. Around 40% of computer users have been infected by a virus which is a low percentage considering that 75% of us either (a) don’t use any anti-virus software, or (b) don’t update their existing anti-virus program on a regular basis.

Businesses and Data Loss

Businesses should definitely be using some sort of data backup service because lost data can be very costly. Almost half (46%) of all the businesses that participated in a 2001 survey claimed that one hour of downtime would cost them at least $50,000. Depending on the nature of the business, loss of data and downtime could actually cost millions by the hour. This is especially true for any businesses in the financial sector, as well as retail, insurance, manufacturing, telecommunications, and the like.

40% of Small to Medium Businesses don’t back up their data at all. This is probably because almost every type of business has (or should have) some sort of hard copy that they can work with and rely on if their computers go down, but what happens when your paper trail is destroyed along with your computers by some natural disaster? 60% of businesses that suffer a major data loss will close down within 6 months. 93% of companies that aren’t able to recover within 10 days of losing their data center (due to a disaster) have filed for bankruptcy within one year.

Final Ramblings

85% of computer users say that they are very concerned about losing important digital files and yet only 25% of us actually back up files frequently. If you’re interested in finding a backup service, please read my review of Carbonite (the service that I use.)

You can backup 2 gigabytes of data for free with a backup service named Mozy, but if you need more than 2GB of space – I suggest that you use Carbonite.

I purchased a two-year subscription with Carbonite for the first time in August of 2008. When I sat down to write this article, I had been using Carbonite for 3 months. If you’ve read my “Why backup your computer files online?” article, you know that I am a pack-rat. So I was looking for a service that offered unlimited backup space. There are a few companies that offer unlimited storage, but I ended up paying $71.96 for 2 years of service with Carbonite, which is about $3 a month. For me, this was a small price to pay (and the cheapest I could find) to get an insurance policy for all of the data that I could cram onto my computer. The following paragraphs contain my review of Carbonite as well as some basic information about their services. Definitely pay attention if you’re thinking about getting started with a service to backup your important files.

Getting Started

First things first, you will probably want to start with your free 15 day trial. This little taste is provided to you without offering up any of your billing information. Just enter your email address, create a password and then download the small program needed to backup your files. Most likely this will be named CarboniteSetup-en.exe and it’s less than 3 megabytes in size. Once you run the install program, the software is very good at walking you through the setup process. After a couple of minutes you should be well on your way to protecting your valuable files.

Keep in mind that some specifics may have changed since I wrote this article.

How It All Works

Obviously you’ll install Carbonite’s application and it will then quietly sit in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. Once the program is up and running, it will look for new files or changes in your old files and back them up. All you have to do is select the folders and files that you want backed up online and Carbonite will get to work. This isn’t some complicated program that you have to learn how to use; you’ll simply operate your computer as you normally do. The software blends right in and you’ll even have the option of displaying a little dot on your icons. These dots will show you the backup status of your files and folders at a glance.

Whenever your computer isn’t too busy, Carbonite will automatically backup your new and updated files. You won’t have to lift a finger unless you need to add more files to backup, which can be done with a simple right-click.

Another important point is that Carbonite doesn’t sit there hogging up your computer’s memory or bandwidth. When you touch your mouse or keyboard, Carbonite will slow down so that it doesn’t interfere with your internet connection or computer activities. Carbonite also recognizes when your computer has been idle and it will resume backing up at a faster speed.

Privacy & Security

Carbonite takes data privacy and security very seriously. You have to understand that protecting digital data is Carbonite’s job, and their livelihood depends on the highest level of security. They encrypt each of your files twice when backing them up securely. Carbonite currently uses the same encryption techniques that the big online banks use. Your files will remain encrypted at the secure backup center, so you’ll be the only one that can view them. Carbonite uses a combination of Blowfish (which is one of the fastest block ciphers in widespread use), and DES III or Triple DES encryption (which is a stronger variation of plain old DES and is billions of times more secure.)

Your files will be stored a Carbonite’s Massachusetts data center. This is a state-of-the-art facility that provides carefully temperature-controlled rooms, backup generators, restricted personnel access, and other features to protect the security and integrity of your data. When I wrote this, Carbonite was running clusters of sixteen, 1 terabyte data-center grade drives that were in a RAID-6 array. RAID-6 is approximately thirty-six million times more reliable than a single disk drive. Three out of the sixteen drives would need to fail -all at the same time – before Carbonite ran into any problems. Luckily, they have software that can detect when a drive is starting to act up and their technicians can replace the drive before there is even one failure.

Recovering Your Files

If you’re computer is still working but you just accidentally deleted or otherwise lost some files, it only takes a few clicks on your computer to get them back. In case your computer is damaged, stolen or completely craps out on you, you can visit Carbonite’s website from your new (or any other) computer. From Carbonite’s website you’ll be able to begin restoring all your files. If you’re like the average Carbonite user, you should be able to restore all of your files within a day or two. Your particular restore time will depend on how many files you have backed up with Carbonite, how fast your internet connection is and how long you’re willing to leave your computer powered on and connected to the internet.

The Initial Backup

I want to talk about the first time that you backup your data. You should expect your backup to go very slowly if you are protecting a lot of files. Carbonite states that you will probably backup 2.5 gigabytes in a 24 hour period with a DSL or Cable internet connection. Even though it takes a while for that first backup to be completed- you’ll never have to backup everything all at once again. Once you’ve completed the initial backup- everything will be quickly backed up as needed.

If you start getting impatient, you should keep in mind that even though you have some super fast internet package- your upload speed is only a fraction of your download (or advertised super fast) speed. So your backup will take a little while, but if you ever need to restore anything- it will download your files 5 to 10 times faster than the uploading process of the initial backup.

The Cons

Carbonite doesn’t backup external hard drives, networked drives, usb drives, flash memory, etc. Carbonite will only backup the data that is stored on the permanently attached hard drives in the protected computer. If this is a problem you can move the files that you want backed up onto the protected computer or you could pay for Carbonite to backup an additional computer.

Carbonite doesn’t work well with a couple of Internet Security programs. You’ll want to check Carbonite’s Troubleshooting FAQ to see if these problems apply to your situation.

When I wrote this article, Carbonite was working on a version for Mac users. If you are one of “those people” – you should check to see if a Mac version is available yet.

Carbonite does not support versions of Windows older than XP – such as Windows 98, Windows 2000 or Windows ME.

Likelihood Of Data Loss

If you haven’t experienced a hard disk crash or some other type of data loss, you’re lucky. Surveys tell us that nearly 2 out of 3 PC users have experienced some form of catastrophic data loss. Statistically, you have about a 1 in 12 chance of having your hard drive crash in any given year, about a 1 in 10 chance of having your laptop stolen, about a 1 in 3 chance of serious data loss through your own errors, and don’t forget about viruses. This means in a single year your chance of needing to restore a file is nearly 60%. That is just in one year – so imagine the chances of you needing to restore a file in your lifetime. The failure rate of any given disk or tape drive is 100% – meaning that almost any mechanical device will eventually fail. If you refuse to backup your files – it won’t be “IF you will lose all of your data” but more of a “WHEN you lose all of your data.”

Carbonite’s Street Cred (ibility)

I was pretty surprised by David Friend, the CEO of Carbonite because has a blog on Carbonite’s main website where he can cover a wider range of topics that are related to his company’s service. What impressed me is that he was out there on other people’s blogs also, answering questions, solving problems, discussing and defending Carbonite’s service. David Friend even offers up his personal email address on Carbonite’s website as well as wherever people are blogging or complaining about Carbonite.

It’s hard to keep up with their growing stats, but while righting this article – Carbonite is backing up 60 million new files a day. They have customers in 104 (and growing) countries. They have more consumer and small business customers than any other online backup service. 70% of the people who try Carbonite for free end up purchasing a subscription in the first two weeks. 98% of Carbonite customers say that they would recommend Carbonite to a friend or family member. Carbonite also surveys their customers to make sure that they’re pleased with the service. These surveys show that 97% of Carbonite users are either satisfied or very satisfied with Carbonite. 99% of customer issues are resolved within one business day.

Final Ramblings

You can spend hundreds to have someone try to fix or recover your drive. Maybe it will work and maybe it won’t. You also risk the technician copying your personal data (that isn’t encrypted) and having fun with it. You can go ahead and promise yourself that you will waste your precious time backing up your files on some CDs or DVDs. The problem is that we both know you will never actually get around to doing it. Even if you did follow through with it, you’ll probably store theses disks or drives right next to your computer to possibly get stolen, damaged or destroyed in a fire, flood, earthquake or other natural disasters. Not to mention that keeping daily or weekly backups will cost a lot of money because you’ll constantly be buying CDs, DVDs or extra external space. Carbonite costs a FEW DOLLARS a month. Carbonite has UNLIMITED storage capacity. Carbonite is ENCRYPTED. Carbonite won’t DIVULGE your private information. Carbonite is ALWAYS ON – continually detecting new data and changes to existing files on your PC. You never have to worry; you know for sure that any data you’ve lost can be recovered. Is it really worth risking your irreplaceable digital photos, important documents and other data? Why Risk It? Protect your files with Carbonite Online Backup. Easy set-up, automatic backup, simple restore. Start your free trial!