I received a pleasant call from a Reseller this week who was enquiring about his wife’s Carbonite subscription. He had purchased a 12 months subscription which expired on May 11 2011. For whatever reason he had missed the renewal messages/reminders and had renewed the subscription a month or so after it had expired. He subsequently found that his original data had been removed, ie he needs to begin his backup again.
What I thought we would do this week, is run through what actually happens when your Carbonite trial or paid subscription nears its expiry.
The Australian Carbonite website offers a 30 day trial subscription which you can access completely free of charge. All you need is an email address and a password. Once you have installed Carbonite it will begin its backup. The process will usually take you a couple of weeks. Carbonite will backup at most 3GB per day, therefore depending on how much data you have it could actually take a bit longer.
We specifically chose 30 days understanding that most Australian internet accounts have generally slower upload speeds compared to our friends in the US who only have a 15 day subscription. We believe that 30 days should give you plenty of time to experience exactly what Carbonite does plus backup most of your data.
Following the installation and setup of Carbonite you will begin to receive a series of email communications from the Carbonite Australia team. They will provide you with information about how Carbonite works, what to look out for and who to contact should you need assistance. As your trial nears its expiry, the emails will begin to focus on your pending renewal or purchase of a paid subscription. You may also notice that the Carbonite icon in your systems tray will begin to tell you that expiry is coming soon.
The messages from your Carbonite icon should get ‘louder’ as the expiry day nears and even louder after it has passed and you haven’t subscribed. In fact they should be popping up so you can’t miss them.
After about a week of no action from you, your Carbonite account is then cancelled and your data deleted. Yes, all gone. Should you need to get access to that data, you can’t. In fact should your trial account pass the 30 day trial period and you want access to it, you will need to buy the subscription first.
A very similar process occurs with a paid subscription. As the subscription nears its expiry, in fact 30 days out from it, you should begin to receive emails reminding you that you will shortly need to act. You may also receive an incentive to do so.
The Carbonite icon in your system tray will also pop-up and tell you about your pending expiry.
Once that expiry period has passed, you have 30 days in which to act before your data gets deleted. If you miss this then there is no turning back. The Reseller that called me today had missed the expiry reminders. The subscription had unfortunately been expired for more than 30 days so the data had more than likely been deleted. Given he had now renewed the subscription his only option was to start again.
If you wish to check when your subscription ends simply look into your Carbonite Info Centre (click Green Carbonite Icon in your system tray). Using the left menu select about. Your screen should look something like this.
Keep an eye out for when your subscription is due to expiry. If you need help with renewing then please give the Carbonite Australia team a call on 1300 88 66 73.
With the events at DistributeIT making news all over Australia and within most news mediums including TV, I thought it would be good time to remind you of how important it is to have a local backup or offsite backup of your website.
The hacks on DistributeIT’s ‘Drought’, ‘Hurricane’, ‘Blizzard’ and ‘Cyclone’ servers has meant that 4800 websites have been lost forever. These are websites of all types of businesses who rely on their online presence to run or promote their business. Along with the loss of the websites and associated files is the loss of the backups preventing these businesses from restoring versions of their website from a week or even a month ago.
The loss of the backups is really the critical thing here. If you could at least go back a month you could make-up on lost posts/articles and even product updates. It might take you a few long days but you could recover. However with the loss of the backups, unless an offsite backup is kept (which DistributeIT didn’t) by you the website owner, then everything is lost.
“I think I’m in shock … I have lost everything …. I couldn’t possibly replicate all those years of work again … my whole life’s work has gone down the drain,” wrote one.
This seems almost too hard. If you are running a small business then having to also consider offsite backups of your website files can be another one of those tasks that never makes it on to the production line.
However I bet many business owners upon reading the articles on the data loss and even seeing TV/News coverage would have been asking their IT person about what backups are in place, and what contingency do they have in place should their hosting company suffer a similar fate.
The truth is that this was a deliberate attack on DistributeIT and an attack that aimed to really hurt the company and its customers.
So whilst this may or may not be a one off, the lessons are there for all.
There are various ways that you can backup your website. Your hosting company will be undertaking at least weekly backups of your files. I know that HostGator does this for you, however regarding what redundancy it has in place should these and the original files go, I have no idea.
If your hosting provider gives you Control Panel access, you should also be able perform a manual backup of all files.
You can do your backup quite easily. Account backups can be performed using the Control Panel -> Backups functionality for your hosting account. If your account is not too big in size you can perform a full account backup just with one click.
If the account is too large for the full automatic backup the files and the databases should be backed up separately. In this case you would need to know what your web site consists of and thus what should be backed up/restored. Usually sites are composed of files and databases. You must take care of them all if you want to have your site exactly the way it has been before.
This is the screen you are moved to in order to perform a full backup. You can usually nominate to have the hosting provider email you when the files are ready.
Once the files are ready, you can then click on the file that is generated and download it locally. In HostGator’s case, these files can’t be used to restore to HostGator, they can only be used to transfer the files to a new hosting provider. I suspect that this might not be the case with all hosting providers.
Control Panel also provides you with a Backup Wizard function. This can be used to also do a backup (what is shown above) as well as a restore.
An alternative approach is to use an FTP tool to make a local copy of the files. In order to backup your files, download all the files from your public_html folder to your computer by using your favourite FTP client. After that you can easily upload the files to your hosting account and your website will be restored.
Once the files are stored locally, make sure you keep a copy offsite so that should everything fail, you have something to turn to.
If you are using a blogging platform like WordPress you can install a plug-in to help you back your files and databases up. There are lots of them out there. Look through the various forums to find what people recommend. Usually the ones with the most downloads have received the most testing. You should be able to also configure the download of this file to your desktop. Once you have done this then use an online backup service such as Carbonite to back these files up.
Other than what is provided via a WordPress plugin, everything listed above is very manual. There are also tools that you can install on your server that can help you to perform automatic backups of your files.
There are ways to prevent these disasters and whilst you would expect that your hosting provider will take care of it, sometimes it can actually be beyond their own capabilities.
The press is telling us that sales in laptops are falling with a shift to the tablet world. Personally my time with tablets has been playing with the original iPad at my local JB Hifi. I was impressed, so was my 4 year old who got the hang of it very quickly.
It might be a lot of hype at the moment and only time will tell, although when Apple gets it right it really does. However I can easily see the 2nd and 3rd family computer in the next 2 – 3 years gradually being phased out by the tablet. Ideal for reading and surfing the net or watching online video.
The jury is out on how much data will be stored locally on them but when you use the net, you do download files to read and work on so inevitably you will store some important information on your iPad or tablet. The other category of data likely to find its way on your iPad or tablet is music and photos.
So, what do you do about backing it all up? Well I spent some time looking this up on the net and asking around Twitter and the iPad looks like it has a simple solution which works but the tablet on Android platform looks to be a little more manual.
For the iPad, you have iTunes as a way of backing up your contents. This is where you can find out what the iTunes service can do for you. On reading it, it looks quite comprehensive but I will be interested to hear what people think of this. This service is for an automated backup which occurs when you sync your iPad with iTunes. It doesn’t happen automatically when you add a file etc like it does with Carbonite on your PC or Mac.
You can use iTunes to sync content on your computer (such as music, applications, podcasts, videos, photos, notes, email account settings, contacts, calendars, and bookmarks) with your iPad.
iTunes creates a backup of your iPad when you sync, which you can then use to restore from if you need to return to a previously backed up state.
iTunes keeps only one backup created during the sync process for each device. If you restore the iPad and choose to set up as a new device from the Set Up your iPad screen, iTunes will automatically sync and create a new, empty backup that will replace your previous backup. If you change your mind and want to restore to your previous state, you will have to retrieve your previous device backup from Time Machine (on your Mac), or other backup solution you regularly use.
Where Backups are stored
The folder where your backup data is stored changes depending on the computer’s operating system. Since iTunes only keeps one backup per device, you should ensure the backup folder is included in your periodic data-backup routine.
iTunes places the backup files in the following places:
Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
Windows Vista: \Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup\
You can create backups in the following ways:
If you have configured your iPad to sync automatically with iTunes on a specific computer, iTunes will back up the iPad after you connect it to that computer and sync with iTunes. iTunes will not automatically back up an iPad that is not configured to sync with that computer. iTunes makes only one backup each time you connect, even if you sync multiple times before disconnecting.
Trying to find information on how to automatically backup your Android Tablet has been a lot harder. Feedback is that it is manual. Plug the tablet into your local PC and manual move the files from the tablet to the PC. Nothing automated about this at the moment. I suspect that it is only time before this is solved.
I expect that over the next 6 months services like Carbonite will develop an application that can be installed on your iPad or tablet that will enable you to transfer the files automatically to your Carbonite Backup. One thing you will however need to be careful of when this eventually is delivered is your data quota, as these tablet are mostly on a 3G wireless data plan. If you are using your home internet connection and wirelessly accessing the net through this then it will not be a problem, but backing up when you are at the local cafe might be a bit of an issue.
There has been some very healthy commenting on a blog post within the flyingsolo.com.au website this week following an article by David Moore, from I Hate My PC.
You can read the whole article here, however I do have an extract for you.
I’m going to tell you the most important information you’ll ever hear about data backups. They come from the heart, they come from cold hard facts and they come from painful experience.
Data backups are essential, but they aren’t sexy or fun. They’re often done poorly, overlooked altogether or fail when you need them most.
I’m not going to tell you what method to use to do your backups because every situation is different. Instead I’m going to share the facts you must take into account:
1. Your backup needs to involve a person who cares about the data
I’m sure you’ve heard about (and maybe even bought) automatic backup solutions that “look after themselves”.
Why would you believe that? Nothing else in computing looks after itself, so why would your backups?
It is a worthwhile article to read and so are the comments left by many small business owners. Online backup must become a part of all backup strategies in particular those of small businesses.
The case that automated is an over-promise has merit, not so much that you can’t let software run the show for you but more from the point of view that you need to test your backup regularly. Furthermore it is your responsibility to ensure that it is working, that the backups are being made and that the data on the backup is up to date. A person needs to do this, you can’t rely on a PC or software to ensure that this is 100% correct.
Whenever I hear a customer telling me that they will install Carbonite and then all of their backup needs will be totally taken care of, I shudder. Much like anti-virus software, the software can only do so much, you also need to be a little smart about the sites you visit and the information you place on those sites.
Carbonite was developed to help everyday consumers and small business get a backup service up and running simply and easily whether they had a internal or external IT person or not at all. Given its easy install process and automated nature, once installed it will begin the backup process and then keep monitoring files for change.
Your responsibility is to ensure that the correct files are selected for backup and that the software is working correctly all of the time. You can check this easily via the Carbonite Backup Drive. This service sits in your system tray and tells you what is happening. What you need to look out for is the green lock eg
If you double click on this what you need to see is:
With your Backup Drive showing you that “Your backup is up-to-date” you can feel secure that your Carbonite software is doing what it should be doing. You can see below what my PC shows.
The take up of online backup services such as Carbonite over the past 3 years in Australia has been significant. This is supported by the fact that flyingsolo as a small business website has run two backup feature articles over the last couple of months.
When we first started marketing Carbonite 3 years ago and approached flyingsolo to contribute articles they didn’t think that their audience would be interested. True story and shows how far we have come.
The issue of internet plans not supporting online backup services is also a misnomer. True that if you don’t watch your backup you could go over your limits but the data plans in Australia have been growing so much that this would really only affect a few people. My experience has been 2 complaints in the 3 years that I have been associated with Carbonite.
This comment is also very relevant:
Ultimately, if you don’t regularly test your backup, try to recover any or all of the data from wherever you’ve chosen to store it, then you are just giving yourself a false sense of security.
The risk that the data wasn’t backed up correctly is a real risk, but so is that fact that you won’t know how to restore it properly if you don’t practice. You need to know how to add the backup to your MYOB or other files. How to return the files to your Outlook.
The beauty of an automated service is that if you don’t have time to do a manual backup and worse still if you are not backing properly at the moment, it can give you a serious head start. Whilst it might be every PC technician’s ultimate recommendation, Carbonite has saved hundreds and millions of files for every day consumers and business owners all over the world.
This is what gives us the confidence to continue recommending this service.
In last week’s post, I wrote about a few tips that could be quite useful should you be planning on leaving home over the Christmas holiday season. In actual fact protecting your property is just as important day in day out when you are leaving home to go to work or simply going to your local shopping centre.
Right after I posted the post last week, I received a tweet from a follower who directed me to a video on Gizmodo. “What happens when you steal a hacker’s computer”. Seems like it’s actually a recent video.
What is quite interesting about it is that it’s a story about how a PC hacker worked out how he could track his lost Mac after it had been stolen from his apartment. Interestingly enough the guy telling the story is an Australian living/working in the US.
It’s not a short video but if you have a spare 20 minutes it’s worth a listen/watch. In a sentence or two, the story revolves around retrieving his stolen property and the lessons this guy learns along the way about how to prevent someone from stealing it in the first place as well as how to protect your data.
His detective skills are quite remarkable (maybe not so much for tech junkies). It’s obvious his Mac meant so much to him after he had had it stolen. This is usually the case for most people when they have lost their data, they will spend $$$ to get it back and months trying if they have to. It is only then that they learn the lesson of protecting your data and or hardware.
In this guy’s case his background should have taught him better, although he did have backups in place there was no online backup, just local. His backups were in the same room as his Mac and they were also stolen. He does admit that a $20 dead bolt would have probably prevented the whole saga (but then we wouldn’t have the story).
Services like Carbonite make it so easy to protect your data. It’s just $6 per month to subscribe to Carbonite. Some online backup services give you a free few GB’s per month, so why wouldn’t you just try it. It will save you heaps in the long run because your PC will eventually fail. Mine has failed three times since I was introduced to Carbonite.
The beauty of online backup is that it is instant. Today I moved 150 photos (2GB) from my SDHC card to my PC. The pictures were added to a sub-folder within my Pictures folder. Within minutes of adding the pictures green dots were appearing everywhere. I looked through the pics and saw photos of a loved one that we lost this year, I would be devastated to lose those pics.
I hope you enjoyed the DefConVideo, I certainly did.
Keep an eye out for when your subscription is due to expiry. If you need help with renewing then please give the Carbonite Australia team a call on 1300 88 66 73.
