Not you too, Carbonite!

So, I was doing my daily routine of checking out the headlines when I ran across this: "Carbonite Stacks the Deck with 5-Star Reviews". So in the wake of the Belkin mess, apparently, Carbonite has posted some positive reviews of themselves to manipulate the ratings. I find it very disappointing that Carbonite had to resort to this.

I've been a customer of theirs for nearly two years, and I have used the recover backup functions at least four times (twice for my HP, once when HP wiped my laptop to "fix" it, and once when I replaced my HP with my Aspire One). Each time I recover, I am very thankful that my data was backed up offsite. Sure, I would've achieved the same results with an external HDD, but say my apartment burns down and destroys both my computer and my HDD. Or if someone steals my HDD, and later I lose my data on my computer. That's pretty bad. And with an HDD, you have to remember to plug it in and do regular backups. I've said before, the two keys of a good backup is: 1) regular backups and 2) store offsite away from your computer. My backup is in the "cloud" with Carbonite and it syncs automatically whenever my computer is on and connected to the internet.

I just bought a 500GB external HDD (500GB for $115!) so I can move some video files over there. I'll probably do another copy of my files there too as a secondary backup, but I don't plan on cancelling my Carbonite subscription. If anything, I got the HDD to backup some nonessential files (videos) so I don't have to backup those to Carbonite. And since I don't really care if I lose some videos I've already watched, I can save time if I need to recover my data again from Carbonite.

Again, it's a shame Carbonite had to do what they did. Unlike Belkin, their product is actually good.