Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda!  As an IT Exec, I’ve never said that before…(Anyone remember the FRAM Guy?  Pay me now or Pay me later!)

We all have responsibilities.  Some of us have more than others.  I don’t know about you, but it always seems that I prioritize my responsibilities according to immediate wants and needs.  For Example, I always pay my car bill before I pay my accountant.  I will always spend time with my wife before I spend time with my friends, and when it comes to my kids - there is nothing that I wouldn’t do for them.

But just like some of you, I forget to do things too.   And those times always seem to bite my in the rear everytime!  Like the time that I put off renewing my driver’s license for over two years (yikes!). 

We all procrastinate!

On of my biggest issues used to be backing up my pc’s data.  It was always something:  Forget to reset the scheduler, or fail to update the backup software, or I change the backup device and didn’t reset the software,  or I didn’t change out the tape, or (fill in the excuse here.)

Well it was never a big deal UNTIL MY PC DIED AND MY DATA WAS GONE!

Fortunately I was able to recover most of the data, but only because a good friend of mine recovers data for a living.  That bill would have been $3700.  Wow!  I am a very busy guy, and spending 4 days rebuilding a pc completely threw me out of wack! 

So about a week after this event, I was telling my war story to a friend of mine who is an IT pro as well.  She mentioned to me that the same type thing happend to one of her clients that work from their home when their house caught on fire.  “What do you do?”  It was a great question!  I was going to find an answer because this wasn’t going to happen to me again.

So I began searching for backup hardware devices that were Fireproof, waterproof, impervious to electrical spikes, could automatically backup my files, and do it on the cheap!  Corporate solutions have some of these, but not necessarily all of them and they are not cheap.

Then I found the Answer…!

CARBONITE

Carbonite is not hardware, it’s software…sort of.  The software finds files that need to be backed up, and then saves a copy of those files via my internet connection.  The files are maintained on the Carbonite systems which means that I can leverage their high-end corporate backup systems to handle my needs while only paying like $4 a month for the service.  They will even give you a Free Trial! 

• Fireproof
• Waterproof
• impervious to electrical surges
• Can’t be stolen or misplaced

How do you beat that for $4 a month?  You have to pay $150-$300 for an external hard drive and then you still have all the problems that come with it.

If you don’t have a backup solution for your pc, or your existing backup solution is a pain, you should do yourself a huge favor and check out CARBONITE.

Don’t procrastinate, or it’s gonna be “Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda”!

Bruce