Online backups

[Sarah Goekler]

I have been reading about online backups such as Carbonite, SugarSync, et cetera, and I am interested in getting an online backup system, but I have a concern... As the hard drive is getting full, I was told it would be a good idea to move files off my computer to prevent any problems (my hard drive is 60% full). First, does anybody do this??? I am so nervous about taking files off of my computer!

So then I was thinking I could get an online backup and everything would be all good, but I asked a Carbonite representative about moving files off my computer, and I was told that Carbonite will delete those files within 30 days.

I backup to an external hard drive about once a week, and I also backup to a flash drive after every job. I just don't know how much backup is enough; although, there probably isn't such thing as too much backup.

Any suggestions about this? Is it necessary to move files off my computer? Maybe just the large audio files?

Thank you so much!

[Sarah Goekler]

I'm definitely going to get something like Carbonite for reasons just like those. You don't always have time to prepare for natural disasters, and the unlimited storage on Carbonite is really awesome.

Thanks for all your input!!

[Diana Sasseen]

I did see that with the 15-day trial they'll delete your files 10 days AFTER the 15 day trial if you don't end up buying their service. That's all I saw about deleting files.

[Sarah Goekler]

By deleting files I meant if I removed a file to an external hard drive, would it then delete on the online backup, and the answer is yes, at least from what I gathered. I was hoping they kept the files you backed up "forever" regardless if you removed or deleted them from your computer. Here is a follow-up email that was sent to me after I talked to this lady via online instant messaging on the Carbonite website:

Hello and thank you for contacting Carbonite Customer Support.

If you delete a file from your computer, Carbonite will schedule the file to be deleted within thirty days. This gives you some time if you realize you deleted the wrong file. You do not need to manually delete the files from your Carbonite backup. If you wish to remove a deleted file from your Carbonite backup even sooner, browse to the file within the Carbonite Backup Drive, right-click it, and select Don't back this up. The file will be removed from your backup in 24-72 hours.

Please let us know if you need additional assistance.

Sincerely,

Leena G.

Carbonite Customer Support

www.carbonite.com

Backup. Simple.

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

With huge hard drives, there's no reason to ever delete stuff off your main computer. I'm not talking about crap that is useless and just clutter. Of course continue to delete that. But anything that might possibly ever be needed, keep it. Don't delete ever. Just get a larger hard drive for your main computer. Mine is 160 GB and is 70% full so I will be replacing that hard drive sooner than later. I keep everything on my 2 external hard drives. I don't keep that much on my laptops. I keep Catalyst synched but that's all I care about on the main and spare laptops. Every once in a while I'll synch some Word folders to my laptop but it's not that important to me and therefore my laptops are not a storage site for me. I have a third external hard drive (a good price so I snatched it up) that's waiting in the wings. As soon as one of the current two external drives fails, I'll synch that one immediately to my desktop hard drive and then start using that for nightly backups.

[Sarah Goekler]

The hard drive on my "main" computer is pretty small I think. I got this computer as a gift for when I went off to school, so a new, bigger hard drive is a must have. I'll look into that real soon. Thank you!

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

you're WUM!

[Scott Sinclair]

Hi Sarah. I use flash drives. They are pretty cheap and you can just dump to them. I got mine at buy.com. Scott