When dealing with computer hardware and software there is always the risk of failure. Backing up your data is one of the most important things you can do to protect yourself from data loss. If you’re a business and need data lost protection for business data or you’re a casual user just looking to protect your pictures and music Carbonite is a great solution.

I first heard about Carbonite back in 2006 they were one of Howard Stern’s sponsors on Sirius when he moved from terrestrial radio to satellite radio. Carbonite being a head of the curve with the cloud computing craze and with the release of iPhone in 2008 creating the app market all helped the company grow to a great success.

Carbonite offers a personal version and a business version. The business version which is branded Carbonite for Office allows you to backup virtually any type of file on both physical and virtual servers, NAS, SAN and external hard drives. I have seen this personally help several of my business friends when they had a server crash, Carbonite restores the entire drive back to the mirror image it has from the last known backup.

Carbonite has a very might I say cool option for users. If they have crash and the restore from the cloud will take too long they can ship you an external drive with the image of your device right on the hard drive with fast shipping options. I find that to be one of the best features of Carbonites services.

Carbonite has a client that you install on your machines and every night and it will backup up any files that were changed on the hard drive. Under computers you will see a drive labeled Carbonite, inside of that drive is a mirror image of your drive if you need to copy back something you deleted just copy it back to your hard drive it’s that easy. Carbonite even has backups from different days so if you deleted something a week ago and want it back no problem you just go back a week and find the file on Carbonites website.

Carbonite works on Windows or Mac desktops and servers, Carbonite does not yet support backing up of Linux. Carbonite does offer an app for iPhone and Android where you can manage your account and see what files are in your backup right from your mobile device. I found that to be handy when you’re on the go and want to see if you have a copy of a file.

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Carbonite has 3 different pricing models for just office computers and 250 gigs of storage $199.99 a year not a bad price. If you want to backup servers you will need the $599.99 for 250 gigs package and for their big unlimited package $999.99 a year is still not bad.

Carbonite for Office is a great edition for any office if you want to back up a few office machines or servers it’s a great solutions which has worked very well in my experience I would recommend Carbonite to anyone in need of a backup solution for their business.