William Leggett

In the Star Wars universe, carbonite was the only acceptable medium for keeping Han Solo safely and indefinitely preserved, so naming an online backup service Carbonite is a bold statement of (geek-centric) quality. Is this data retention solution worthy of Boba Fett's seal of approval, or is this just another case of dark side branding treachery? I seek out the truth in this review.

A Bit of History

Carbonite was the first online backup company to offer unlimited backup space for a fixed price. Prior to Carbonite entering the market in early 2006, all online backup services were priced by the gigabyte. This has now changed and those companies that have survived follow Carbonites lead.

The Tech

Carbonite uses encryption to protect the security of files as it leaves your personal computer and then sends the data along the same type of encrypted data lines that are used for credit card transactions for extra security. Microsoft has now bundled Carbonite into its Money software for personal finances. Here is what TechCrunch wrote about Carbonite and here is what Backup review wrote about them.

“While the service is originally targeted for individuals and small businesses that do not have elaborate in-house backup services, the wide spread use of laptops that are often not connected to a company network, has prompted some employees within large organizations to become users. This is another example of a web consumer service making its way into the enterprise through individual users. Once again, they find something that helps and take it to work.”

If you choose to select your own files you can keep tabs on the backup status of each file using the coloured dot system. A file with a green dot has been backed up, a yellow dot denotes pending backup and no dot means it’s not selected for backup.

It will automatically back up your files in the background, and because it works when your PC is idle, I didn’t notice any slow down in performance. The first backup does take a while, but after that backups are incremental, so only things that have been changed will be stored again, which speeds up the whole process.

Restoring files is simple too. You just select the remote Carbonite drive from ‘My Computer’, open up the folder, which holds all your files and copy the ones you want back on to your computer.

Simples....