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.
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.
Carbonite is a set and forget solution. It works. More importantly it saves you and gets you your data back when disaster strikes. However, it’s your data and therefore your responsibility to ensure that your online backup solution is working the way it should be.
So how do you test Carbonite and when should you test Carbonite.
Whenever someone calls us here at Carbonite Australia and asks about how Carbonite works and what it offers compared to other backup methods I explain the usual key features including the fact that we offer a free 30 day trial etc. I also add in the need to test the service and to be comfortable with it before you buy it. Not that its expensive. $6 a month to backup your PC is very affordable for everyone.
The reason why I advise that you should test it is to ensure that you have seen it work and do what it’s supposed to do. That is backup your data and then restore it.
Testing Carbonite
Start with a free trial. Install it on your PC , however during the installation be sure to select manual backup. This will enable you to manually select the files you want to backup. By doing this we can simply select a handful of files, back them up and then restore them.
Once the installation is complete we will do just that. Using Windows Explorer, find the files we wish to test the backup with, right click on them and then back them up. Little amber dots should now appear beside each of the files.
The next step is to wait until the little amber dots turn green. This will indicate that the files are now fully backed up. You can also check this by finding the files from within your Carbonite Backup Drive. This is accessed via Windows Explorer or from the start menu.
Computer\Carbonite Backup Drive
This is the mirror of what is held on the server for you by Carbonite. The folder gives you access to two sub folders. Backed Up and Pending Backup. The files will be stored in the exact same directory structure as what is on your machine.
Find the files. If they are there you know that they are safe and secure. If you have saved various version of these files over time, you can actually find and restore the historical version by right clicking on the file and selecting “Restore previous versions”. The window will then show you the versions stored by Carbonite.
In order to test Carbonite, what we want to do is delete the files we have backed up with Carbonite and then restore them. Just in case Carbonite hasn’t worked, we are best to create a local backup of the files. Copy them and paste them in a folder. Then return to the original files and delete them. Once you are sure that they are no longer in their original location, we want to revisit our Carbonite Backup Drive and then restore the files. Right click on the file name and restore it.
Within seconds you should see that the file has actually returned.
You can now test this as many times as you like. Personally, I would test it with both a large and small file to see how quick it is to restore the files for you.
Remote Access
The second test we want to do is to restore files using Remote Access. Once again visit the files you restored and delete them again. This time instead of restoring them via the Backup Drive, we want to restore them via Remote Access.
You can login to Remote Access from here. Once logged in, you should be able to drill through the drives shown and find the files. It should look something like this:
Once you have found the file, all you need to do is right click and restore it. What will happen is that it will be downloaded to your local machine.<
Full Restore
The final test is a full restore of the files to your machine. What we are trying to replicate here is having your PC crash, re-imaged and then returned to you with no data.
If you need to restore everything in your backup to a new or repaired PC, follow these steps:
Step 1: Log in to your account and reinstall Carbonite. Go to https://www.carbonite.com.au/Manage/restore.aspx, and log in using your email address and Carbonite password. Continue to follow the prompts on the screen.
Step 2: Restore files from your backup
When you’ve successfully reinstalled Carbonite on your new PC, you’ll see the Carbonite Restore Wizard. You can use the Restore Wizard to restore the files in your backup to your new PC. When the pop up appears, click on the Yes, help me restore files now button as shown below. (If you select No, I’ll do it Later you can restore your files at a later time by double-clicking on the Carbonite lock icon in your system tray and selecting View Restore Options. The option to Restore All of my files will relaunch the Restore Wizard.)
You then have two choices, to Restore all missing files to their original locations (Recommended), or to Restore my files to the user account(s) I select.
The recommended option to Restore all missing files to their original locations will guide you automatically through the process.
The second option Restore my files to the user account(s) I select allows you to restore user accounts to different user profiles than the ones from which they were originally backed up. Before beginning the restore, make sure your user account has been created on the system. After you make your selections click Continue and Start Restoring Files.
The final check to see if it is working right, is to look at for the green Carbonite lock in your system tray. When you first start out with Carbonite and you are in backup mode, it will be amber, once it has completed the backup it will turn green. A green Carbonite lock is a healthy lock.
If you have done all of this testing and Carbonite has received all ticks, then I would definitely buy it.
Last week we looked at some common misconceptions with backups. This week we look at how we can implement a good backup system?
There are thousands of articles out on how to implement a good backup system and I am sure they all give great advice. What is most important is that you implement something that you can manage without it stressing you out of giving you too much manual work to do (that you will eventually give up on). Best thing to do is to start somewhere, then read some more and improve what you are doing. Being in control is the most important thing.
Types of backups
If you have your data on discs and CD drives stop being available, then how do you access your data? Or, what if all your data is on BluRay discs and your BluRay drive fails? You won’t be able to access that data until you replace your BluRay drive.
A good rule of thumb here is to make sure that you have backups on different types of media – keep some backups on DVD’s and others on external hard drives or online with an online backup system (like Carbonite of course).
You are obviously not going to be able to do this for every single file that requires backing up. It is however important that you do it for the really critical files (e.g. legal documents, accounting records, important pics, home contents database for insurance use). Having all of this data available in a variety of forms is really in your best interest.
Location of backups
I have often written and even tweeted about the risk of relying purely on external drives. They are certainly worth while having and with the prices of TB drives falling to under $200, why wouldn’t you invest in one or even more than one (I have one at home). So sitting beside your computer is a nice little pile of external hard drives that hold all your backups. Now what happens if your home (or office) burns down or gets burgled? Not only are you very likely to lose your computer, you will also lose all of your backups as well.
I have a blog post from a few months back where a shop had two laptops stolen in seconds. All of the data went with the laptops.
If all your backups are in one place, and it’s the same place as your computer, this is not a great backup strategy. A good backup strategy would be to have at least one of your backups somewhere else. So in case of a fire, burglary or some other disaster, all of your backups will not be at risk.
This same principle applies to media types as well. No good have the CDs and the hard drives all sitting under your desk. If you can’t move them to outside of the house of office, then at least keep them in separate rooms. Obviously this is where online backup can play a big role, as its remote. In the cloud is as remote as you can get I suppose.
Number of backups
This next rule is about keeping a master backup. What happens if you’re part way through a backup to an external hard drive and it fails? Or you think it has completed and nothing has actually been transferred and you don’t notice? Should this happen to you, although you may think you now have 2 sets of backups, you really only have one. Rule of thumb is that you should never overwrite your only backup in case something goes wrong.
What software
There are lots of online backup providers available today and luckily enough they are all very affordable. I suggest you trial a few and see how easy they are to backup your files as well as restore them. Compare prices and what other features they have eg online access to your files or even the ability to have one account across PC and Mac and even Linux if you use it. The more flexible the better but be sure to also pick a system on its usability. Having every feature under the sun isn’t everything.
Carbonite is great because it is automated and very user friendly. However it will only cover your offsite backup needs. There are also tools like Acronis that you can use to backup instantly to your hard drive. One piece of software will not do it all for you.
No one says you need to go out there and buy it all at once. Make a plan and start to construct it. Buying and installing each piece of the backup strategy gradually.
What else do I need?
One large external hard drive (1TB or greater) with either FireWire or USB.
Some writeable CDs or DVDs.
A license to Carbonite (giving you unlimited online backup)
A license to Acronis for instant backup to your hard drive.
Use Acronis to backup to your external drives. You can set this to run daily or every other day depending on how much new data you write.
Configure Carbonite to backup all of your data automatically for you. It will pick up every change up ensure your offsite backup always have the most recent version.
One More Thing…
There’s no point in making backups if you aren’t making sure that your backups work. Get into the habit of check your hard drives at least once or twice a week is recommended. Do a restore of some files from Carbonite on a regular basis to ensure it is working right.
There’s nothing worse than having gone to all the trouble of setting up your external drive to backup weekly and your Carbonite to backup automatically offsite, only to find when you really need to restore some personal data, that your backups are corrupted or aren’t readable.
The personal data we have stored on our computer is for most of us and in most cases irreplaceable. For those that don’t agree, then you would agree that the effort to replace it would be significant and very time consuming. Think about it, if they are photos that you have lost, how do you go back and take more, maybe scan in printed versions? Not much fun.
Your personal data goes way beyond what you have saved in Documents, or in music or video folders. It includes all your bookmarks,the contacts you have in your Address Book, and the email you have received and sent.
Having a good backup plan and process gives you peace of mind that, when disaster does eventually occur you are prepared.
If you’re aiming to minimise the stress when the time comes where you need your backup, you have to be prepared. Once things start to go wrong, you may not have much time to save the situation.
Misconceptions:
“No problem”, “I keep all my personal data on my external hard drive”.
If you only have your personal data in one place, it isn’t a backup.
It doesn’t matter if your only backup is an internal hard drive, an external hard drive, USB stick, or DVD’s. If you only keep one copy, then you can lose it just through having whatever it’s stored on dying.
So you need more than one method of backing up your important files.
“That’s easy, I back up my computer to an external hard drive once a week with CCC!”
Now here comes the second principle:
A manual backup isn’t as good as an automated backup.
If your backups are done automatically, you know that they will get done (you should always check). If your backups are done manually, there is a good chance that they will get delayed or skipped this week because something more important comes along, you have a busy day, you forget to connect the hard drive, or your busy working on the PC and don’t want to be interrupted.
A backup that relies on you actually doing something to make it happen is far less likely to be truly useful than one that happens automatically.
“I don’t need a backup, all my data is on a NAS and that’s using RAID!”
RAID is not a backup.
RAID will keep your system running and you working even though you have had a hardware failure. Its fantastic technology. You do however require redundancy. Now if your have a hard drive failure not only will your systems keep working but you won’t lose your data.
When you look at this situation it’s easy to see why it could be mistaken for a backup. You don’t lose data when hardware fails.
Even with a RAID, you can still accidentally delete files. RAID will not help you get them back. Making sure its backed up will. RAID helps your systems keep running when hardware fails. A backup, though, is what you need when you lose data.
So there you have it, some common misconceptions regarding your backup. Next week we will go into some of the strategies you can use to built a strong backup process.
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.
