You may remember me sharing this story last year. But with the idea of helping you save your computer like I saved mine, I wanted to share it again. Plus, Carbonite just announced that they are once again giving out $20 gift cards to those who sign up, so it makes this a much better deal for everyone!
A little over a year ago, a friend told me about Carbonite – a source she trusted and loved for backing up all her files on the computer.
At the time, we had nothing backing up our computer. This scared me quite a bit, because if our computer ever crashed, we would lose thousands of pictures – not to mention the eBooks and other projects I was working on for the website, financial documents we had saved, and who knows what else.
We took our friend’s advice, and signed up. For $59 per year, this seemed like a very worthwhile and reasonable investment.
Would you believe, that the investment with Carbonite paid off exactly four days later. Out of nowhere, the hard drive on our laptop (which was only one year old) got completely fried. When the “computer guy” who was examining our laptop looked at me and said, “There’s no way I can retrieve any of your information. Your hard drive is gone. I sure hope you have your files backed up somewhere…” I breathed a huge sigh of relief that God had led us to Carbonite just in the knick of time.
And I also wanted to kiss my friend who had told me about it…and maybe could have kissed the Carbonite people if I was in the business of kissing strangers, which I’m not, so I just chose to be grateful to them instead.
Anyway.
I just received an email letting me know that everyone who signs up with Carbonite receives a free $20 gift card or your choice. (Yay – just in time for Christmas!) This is a great deal, because receiving that card pays you back for a good chunk of your initial yearly investment. Plus, you can get a free 15 day trial to start with to see if you like it. (I’m pretty sure you will like it. We love it because it is super easy to use. Plus, because our files are on Carbonite, I can get online from a different computer and access anything I need to at any time. Love that!)
I encourage you to look into Carbonite and take advantage of this offer. It may save your neck! Or at least it will save all the information stored on your computer that you don’t want to lose!
P.S. If you sign up with Carbonite’s Refer a Friend program, you can help your family and friends back up their computer too – and you’ll both receive gift cards. I’m using my Refer a Friend links in this post, because I like gift cards! Amazon gift cards are the ones I’d choose! But I love how Carbonite saved my pictures and hard work even more, so that’s why I’m sharing this with you. :)
Oh how I wish this had come at a better time, like a week ago. We got a nasty virus on our computer at the end of last week. It encrypted our files and wanted us to pay 300 for a key to open them again. Lost all our files on word, publisher, powerpoint, and thousands of photos – really important ones to us, are now gone. this virus came attached to an email from a trusted source. And got past our piddly anti-virus software we had running on our computer. RUN< people RUN to this site and sign up now before you become a victim like we did. I can't begin to tell you how many tears have been shed as we can look at the folder names of the photos, but every picture is unretrievable. My dear hubs is more worried about the files with his info in it of course. some of which we have printed copies of somewhere around here, but not all. It is a devasting loss, whether it should feel like it or not, there is some real grief going on at this house.
Oh that is a terrible loss. :( I am so sorry this happened to you. Your grief makes sense. Hugs to you.
I use Carbonite, and I love it – but it took my system over 30 days to do the initial backup! I have a Mac, so I can’t sign up for their HomePremier service which will mail you a hard drive. But if you have a lot of data (and these are mostly pictures!), it might be worth it.