Custom Data Centre

Carbonite

It’s not the most glamorous job but somebody’s got to do it. Let’s face it, backup is one of those mundane tasks that nobody wants to be stuck with. Yet it’s arguably the most important computer related task that you could perform. Protecting your valuable data against loss due to fire, flood, hardware failure, theft, and even accidental deletion ensures that you can resume normal business activities in the event of a loss or disaster.

Backup Challenges

	Do you backup your data every day? Or do you sometimes forget? If you don’t backup every day, you should ask yourself another question. If your data was lost right now, could you accurately repeat everything that you have done since your last backup? If you think that this might be difficult, then you should be making a backup more frequently.
	Do you rely on specialized backup hardware such as tape drives? Specialized backup hardware is great until it fails. Then you have to obtain repairs or find a replacement and while you pursue these alternatives, you can’t backup or restore your data. After a few years, it may not even be possible to purchase an exact match for your original backup device, and you may be forced to purchase a new device that can’t read your existing backup media. At that point, you may as well not even have backup media because it’s of no use if you can’t restore from it.
	Do you know how to recover files that have been accidentally deleted? There’s always the Recycle Bin right? Sometimes. If you delete a file that resides on another computer on the network, such as a server, that file won’t be in your Recycle Bin and it won’t be in the Recycle Bin on the other computer either.
	Are your computer and backup media stored in the same place? If you store your backup media in the same place as your computer, then it is vulnerable to many of the same risks. Even if it is in a safe, backup media can still suffer sufficient heat damage to render it useless.
	Can your data be read by a criminal if your backup media is stolen? Encryption or password protection of your backup is essential to protect the privacy of your data as well as that of your customers.

The Backup Solution

The best backup solution is the one that requires the least effort because the more difficult and time-consuming a task is, the less likely it is that it will get done. Backup solutions that provide continuous automatic backup relieve you of the burden of performing backup and provide the most efficient and effective method of maintaining current backup copies of important data files.

The best backup solutions also store backed up data in a device independent format. Tape drives and vendor specific devices such as Zip, Jaz, and Rev discs are quickly falling out of favour because of the problems that arise if the device is lost, stolen, or suffers a hardware failure. USB drives are a much better alternative but there’s still the problem of off-site storage and the cost of having a sufficient number of drives. The more backup drives that you have, the more options you have for restoring data.

The relatively low cost of high-speed Internet service combined with advancements in data encryption and data compression have led many individuals and both large and small organizations to use online backup solutions as a means of meeting their backup needs. Storing backup copies of data on a server in a geographically remote location provides superior off-site storage and because the backed-up data can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection, there is no reliance on special or proprietary hardware.

In fact, the ability to retrieve files from an online backup provides additional benefits. For example, if you’re working away from the office but you forgot to copy a file from the server to your notebook computer, you can login to the online backup service and download that file so that you can work with it.

Custom Data Centre & Carbonite

We’ve been in the computer and software business since 1971 and our staff has nearly 50 years of combined experience. During that time we’ve been responsible for backing up a lot of data and we’ve seen a lot of backup and storage technologies come, and go. That experience has led to conclude that online backup offers the ultimate in data protection and we have selected Carbonite as our preferred online backup provider. In fact, we like it so much that we’ve become an Authorized Carbonite Reseller.

We don’t just sell Carbonite, we use it to backup the critical data on the computers in our office. That means that we know how Carbonite works and we can provide you with efficient and effective assistance should you ever need help. And speaking of help, we can install and configure Carbonite for you remotely using your high-speed Internet connection.

We know what files should be backed-up and where those files reside on your computer. Sometimes important data is stored in some rather obscure folders on your hard drive and sometimes those folders are even hidden from your view. For example, do you know where email and contacts are stored? Is that important data being backed up?

Carbonite can serve as your sole method of backup, or it can be 1 part of a 2 part backup strategy. For example, you could still use your USB hard drive to periodically make a complete system backup while Carbonite looks after the backup of those files that have changed since the last complete system backup.

When you backup your data with Carbonite, it’s stored in purpose built data centres that are equipped with redundant uninterruptible power supplies with backup generators, 24/7 security staff, biometric access controls, and a disk storage system that is 36,000,000 times more reliable than a single disk drive. This means that your data has a level of protection that is far beyond what most organizations would be able to provide on their own.

For less than $5.00/month/computer, Carbonite provides you with unlimited storage and your data is encrypted twice before it is sent to the Carbonite servers, where it remains encrypted so that your data can only be seen by you. As an added bonus, iPhone and iPod Touch users can now view and email their backed up files from virtually anywhere using the free Carbonite App.

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