Carbonite is a fully-automated, secure online backup service. Once it's setup, you don't have to do anything at all: your PC is backed up for you every time you create or change a file or folder.

Most of us have to learn the backup lesson the hard way. I was fortunate enough that mine was learned in 1984.

All storage media fail, be they hard drives, flash memory, DVDs or anything else. It's thus vital to have a solid backup regime.

Any backup system that relies on good intentions is doomed to failure. The busier you get, the less likely you are to take the time to perform a manual backup - and the busier you are, the more valuable data you are generating; not a good combination. What is needed is a fully-automated system.

If you have a desktop PC, there are quite a few options open to you, involving additional internal hard drives and permanently-connected external ones. You simply run software that mirrors the main drive(s) to the backup(s). The only weakness of this system is that your backup is in the same physical location as your main data, so vulnerable to burglary or housefire.

If you use a laptop, or want the security of an offsite backup, an online backup service is the answer.

Online backup offers two main benefits. First, the aforementioned protection against the housefire scenario. Second, it is location-independent: my files are backed up whether I'm in my office or in a hotel room in Hong Kong.

The initial backup will take a while. Even fast broadband links have limited upload speeds, so the first backup will take anything from a few days to a few weeks. Once that's complete, incremental backups are very fast.

As Carbonite mirrors your drive, every time you create or change a file, Carbonite changes the backup also. It also deletes files from the backup when you delete them from your PC. However, to guard against those little 'Oh ****! I didn't mean to delete that!' moments, Carbonite waits 30 days before actioning deletions.

You can see the backup status of any file or folder from little traffic-light symbols that Carbonite appends to files and folders. Here, the green symbols (bottom-left of the folder icons) show that the folder has been backed-up within the past 24 hours:

You can also verify the backup status by accessing the Carbonite drive that appears as an additional drive in My Computer:

The best thing about it is that you don't have to do a thing - it all happens completely automatically in the background no matter where you are. Any time you have a net connection, it kicks into action.

If the worst happens and your PC dies altogether, you simply install Carbonite on your new PC, login to your account online and select Restore. Your Carbonite drive then appears on your PC and you can either right-click and select Restore to recreate your old PC, or you can access the drive and drag across individual files and folders as desired.

Carbonite costs $50/year, which I consider a rather small price to pay for effortless peace of mind. You can also get a 15-day trial to ensure that it all works ok (you can quickly test it by creating a small duplicate folder, setting it to backup only that, then deleting the folder and performing a restore).

If you use my affiliate link below, we'll each get extra free months:

http://www.carbonite.com/raf/signup.aspx?RAFUserUID=80505&a=0