Consumer-friendly PC backup tools emerge

By BRIAN BERGSTEIN

updated 6:56 p.m. ET July 25, 2006

BOSTON - Shalin Mody's computer held innumerable things he'd love to have forever: TV shows, video games, papers and more than 50 gigabytes of music. So normally he would have panicked the day the PC completely failed, unable to start up.

Fortunately, the 26-year-old investment manager had only weeks earlier come across a blog describing Carbonite, an inexpensive new service that backed up everything on his PC over the Internet and stored it remotely.

When he bought a replacement PC, Carbonite repopulated it with his old files.

"It was extremely lucky," Mody said. "I just didn't stress too much."

The first part of Mody's experience is all too common. It's generally just a matter of when, not if, a disk drive fails.

The solution to Mody's woes, however, is much rarer. While backing up computer files is standard procedure in big companies, for regular people it traditionally has been a cumbersome, expensive and easy-to-blow-off affair.

Now, however, as people increasingly stuff the home computer with digital photos, videos, music and other valuable content, several companies are popping up to offer some insurance.

Taking advantage of cheap data storage and the proliferation of broadband Internet connections, Web-based services such as Carbonite can provide the equivalent of a fireproof safety deposit box for digital content.

"I think this is stuff that people don't really realize they can do," said David Friend, CEO of Boston-based Carbonite, which lets users back up unlimited amounts of data for less than $5 a month.

Carbonite runs in the background of a Windows-based computer, copying files, encrypting them and sending them to remote servers. Because most broadband connections have much slower upload speeds than download speeds, the initial backup process can take several days.

Users can individually select which files or file types they want backed up. Or they can just have everything stored with Carbonite just in case. The software is designed to be like antivirus software: something the user doesn't have to think about.

In fact, security vendor Symantec Corp. — which bought storage specialist Veritas Software Corp. last year — soon plans to combine a Web-based backup product with its Norton antivirus software. Glover Lawrence, a principal in the tech-focused investment bank McNamee Lawrence & Co., predicts other security-storage combos will follow because consumers already trust the vendors.

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