You are creating an IMQAGE of you computers. That way when a hard drive fails, you get a terrible virus or the units are stolen, you get as new PC/drive, etc. then by using an IMAGE (not data backup) you can restore your PC exacyl to the way it was when you last took the IMAGE. Not more looking for disks, reinstall Quickbooks, Reinstallig office, remembering all those custom settings for Office or your Browser.

 

With Windows 7, Microsoft provided this System Image tool for free (use to cost $79 per machine). Make the images. Leave the drive at your house or with a parent, friend, etc..

 

A few examples: We had imaged a consulting firm. Come in Momday mornig to find the door kicked in and all for of their computers stolen. Call the police. Called me. Had them go to Office Depot and buy 2 new PCs. 3 hours later they had 2 of 4 people backing working with all their programs, email, etc. from the back of the last image. Then to get them more current we restored from Carbonite. Carbonite only had to dowlnoad the stuff since the last image. Took about 1/2 a day.

 

Story #2, Dave the jeweler. Called up. Hard drive failed. Put in new hard drive. Took almost all day to resintall Office, WIndows XP, Auto CAD, etc.. Asked him for his local back up (external drive, DVDs, etc. ) and he had none. We had him on Carbonite. Asked him, 'What do yu want restored?' He said, 'Everything'. Chose that option from Carbonite. They told us it would take about 3 weeks to get all his data back. "Okay Dave, how about we restore just the stuff from last week and let Carbonite continue to restore in the back ground?" That took 2 hours.

 

Story #3: Local vet we know, girl up front, deleted the daily call sheet. Now they were going to have to recall 32 clients. The office manager called me (good for her) and was going to restore from a system image. I told her no! Go to Carbonite and chose restore a selected file. She restored that one file and everything was great.

 

So with backup you need to remember, 3-2-1. That is 3 copies of your data, in 2 formats (hard drive, DVD or online) with 1 being off sight. Then, like a good insurance policy, you would like to have a system image. Just in case ...