Celebration Realty LLC

"At my last company, we had a crash and lost everything, all our data," says Ed McDevitt. "We basically had to restart the company from scratch. I never want to go through that again."

In late 2010, McDevitt founded Celebration Realty and Appraisal Services in Allentown, Penn., a firm that offers appraisals and other real estate services to owners of residential properties. At his former company, after a massive technology crash, employees raced to recreate files from paper copies and, sometimes, from memory. "It took a month before we even started to feel like we could still be in business," he recalls. "When you live through something like that, you learn the value of data backup."

Starting Fresh

When McDevitt started Celebration, he thought about a complement for the hard drive backup system, and he wanted a solution that would work not just for him but also for the other three employees at the company.

He embarked on a significant research effort, comparing different services and systems, reading user comments and comparing prices, user interfaces and maintenance needs.
He says, with a laugh, "I'm a very thorough person. I'm not going to choose a product unless I have tons of information about it first."

Finding Better Backup

McDevitt determined that Carbonite was the best system for his business. He liked the online comments about how easy it is to retrieve data from Carbonite, a major consideration for him after his experience.

"Everyone was saying that Carbonite is better, so I thought I'd see for myself," he says. "I'm glad I did."

Backup in Action

After using Carbonite on a free trial basis, McDevitt was convinced that he'd found the right solution for his company and that he would never face another traumatic data loss. He even did a "fire drill" run, trying to retrieve data as if he'd lost it, and he found that getting the data from Carbonite was quick and easy.

"It was seamless," he says. "There's a lot to like about Carbonite."

Some of his favorite features

• The automatic backup

  He appreciates that Carbonite saves data automatically as he works, freeing him from doing manual backup tasks.

• Instant data access

  Considering his past experience with data loss, McDevitt was happy to find that his files were being saved securely, just as Carbonite promise

• Frequent updates

  Carbonite backs up data consistently and regularly, so McDevitt and others don't need to worry about having the most up-to-the-minute data available.

Since switching to Carbonite, McDevitt sees the data loss experience as just another scary business story and one that won't be repeated. He says, "Having backup that's secure and reliable is such a relief."”