Carbonite Backup?

Has anyone availed themselves of the Carbonite online backup system? I'm pretty fastidious about making backups, most of which are automated now, but having an off-site backup that is done automatically via the web is interesting. If there is a natural disaster, etc., having the data securely backed up elsewhere is very nice indeed.

So, anyone use this service? How did you like it? Thanks.

 

Here's a pcmag review

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2370803,00.asp

 

Thank you for the link. I looked over it now. I'm surprised to find external drives/volumes aren't backed up. I thought I read otherwise. Hmmm... well, I'll keep researching it. Thanks again.

 

I have a few friends that use it, but I would never use something like this for numerous reasons. The most important is the fact that any time your data is placed on machines and duplicated, which they call being "in the cloud" now, then it can be modified, copied, or transfered anywhere without you being aware of it. Even if you encrypt it first, there's no guarantee that the encryption is enough to keep others from decrypting it and getting all of your information when they do. So I would never use Carbonite or anything like it because it is a major, no - HUGE security risk which can be avoided. Instead, I just duplicate and back up my data locally. If I ever have to store it elsewhere, I only store parts of it in sequences similar to how a RAID stripe would, and hold on to the rest or place the other part or parts to it physically in other locations. That way, there is always data missing that cannot be reconstructed correctly if someone else were to obtain it. That's about the extent that I trust having any part of my data in any other location.

 

It's nice to see a well written article,by someone that knows the subject matter.