Being a well-known technology guru is no guarantee that you're not going to get slammed with the same PC catastrophes that affect the rest of us. cNet's Don Reisinger learned this lesson after doing a demo on how to take apart your iMac and replace the hard drive. Long story short, after spending a significant amount of time and money, he ended up losing most of his files. Here's Don's conclusion for his readers: "I screwed up and it cost me money. Don't let this happen to you. Make sure you back up your files."

I consider myself to be pretty technically savvy, but a very similar thing happened to me back in 2005. In fact, it was a major factor in the decision to start Carbonite. Like most people, I had an external hard drive and every so often I would back up my PC to the hard drive. The problem, if you're like me, is that you do this religiously for a while, and then the backups get less and less frequent. I travelled a lot back then, and I didn't want to drag the hard drive on the road with me because I didn't want to lose it. When I was home, I was too tired or distracted to connect the hard drive and run a backup. When my hard drive finally crashed, I discovered that it had been three months since my last backup. Worse, I discovered that all the new folders that I had created since originally setting up the backup had not been added to the backup. So I lost nearly everything of value.

The reason I find online backup so compelling (I truly love it) is that it works ANYWHERE you connect to the Internet. So if I am sitting at Starbucks in the Dallas airport, Carbonite is backing up my work. And I don't know how many people are aware of this, but Carbonite was the first company to offer unlimited backup for a fixed price. The reason we went this route is so that the user wouldn't have to know where their files were stored to add them to their backup. The backup just happens automatically.

Ed Baig of USA Today recently wrote about how his own personal data loss as part of a larger column on passengers whose laptops were destroyed in the US Airways Flight 1549 emergency landing in the Hudson River. While Ed's data loss wasn't as dramatic of those onboard flight 1549, he luckily was using Carbonite and was easily able to restore his files. Carbonite's restore process is fast — even over a residential DSL, you can get 20-30GBs downloaded in less than a day. Because Ed was using Carbonite, his files were available right away. No waiting to have DVDs shipped in the mail or other similar kluges.

Has Carbonite saved your bacon, personally or professionally? Let me know your story via e-mail at David (dot) Friend (at) carbonite.com or in the comments.

— Dave
CEO, Carbonite