Carbonite Review for Business File Backup

As a company that likes to help small businesses experience more success, Qlixite is now incorporating reviews of products and services.

This review will discuss how Carbonite can help you protect your Small Business files in a secure offsite location in case of computer failure.

Carbonite is a comprehensive and robust online backup service that will keep your important files backed up with a minimum of fuss and virtually no interference. It's all controlled by a simple program that runs invisibly in the background. In fact, the recent release of Carbonite 4.0, makes the whole process even easier. They've simplified the setup and given you more options for restoring your files. But before we get much more into restoring files, let's talk about backing things up.

Backup:
As with all online backup services, the initial backup will take a while. Depending on your Internet connection speed and the amount of data on your hard drive, it could take a day or more. Your computer is completely usable during this time, but you'll need to keep it on and connected. Subsequent backups will take less time as Carbonite will only need to save new files and previously backed-up files that have changed.

By default, Carbonite backs up your documents, email, photos, and music. We like that Carbonite takes care of emails automatically, since many online backup services don't, requiring the user to manually locate these files and add them to a backup schedule. However, it won't back up files larger than 4GB unless you tell it to.

Restore & Remote File Access:
In the event of a crash or any other data loss, you simply use the downloadable Carbonite InfoCenter to restore your lost data. But Carbonite's usefulness goes beyond disaster recovery. While we generally talk about an online backup service as a remedy for catastrophic data loss, there's another feature users will love and use much more often, and that's versioning. Carbonite will automatically save up to twelve versions of every file you back up. This allows you to roll back to a previous iteration of any file to recover lost changes. It's like the ultimate "undo" option. Anyone who's ever made unalterable changes to a large text or graphics file will recognize the value in this feature.

Carbonite can also migrate files to a brand new PC. That functionality is now standard with Carbonite 4.0; a new restore option promises to put all your files in just the right place on your new system.

Carbonite can also be used to access your files from any computer that has an Internet connection. Simply log in to the remote access section of carbonite.com and you'll see all your files, just as you would if you were looking at your hard drive (minus the programs). It's a good feature, and it's one you'll find with many online backup services, although it's not as evolved as it is in a product like SugarSync. You can't, for instance, use it to securely share files with others. They're for your eyes only. A small knock against an otherwise great service.

Pricing:
Carbonite does offer a free 15 day trial version of their product so you can see if you will like and use the service. We wish it was a 30 day option but at least they offer a trial.

Carbonite offers unlimited storage for a single computer in the form of three plans.
Click here to see their online comparison.

• Home $59 per computer per year for Mac and Windows.

• File and folder backup
• Web and mobile access
• Phone, chat and email support
• Manual video backup

• HomePlus $99 per computer per year for Windows only.

• File and folder backup
• Web and mobile access
• Phone, chat and email support
• External hard drive backup
• Mirror Image backup
• Manual video backup

• HomePremier $149 per computer per year for Windows only.

• File and folder backup
• Web and mobile access
• Phone, chat and email support
• External hard drive backup
• Mirror Image backup
• Courier Recovery service
• Automatic video backup

Unlimited backup is a great deal, but note that Carbonite limits you to backing up a single computer. If you'd like to backup multiple computers, you need to purchase a subscription for every computer you need to backup.

Conclusion:
For pure online backup for a single home or business computer, Carbonite is a good bargain. While it may not have all the fancy features other online backup providers have, the setup is simple, fuss free, and comprehensive. The user interface simple and easy to use. You'll just set it and forget it—until the day you need to restore your files