Securing Your Data, Simplified

admin | September 4, 2009

Restore Your Data with Ease

If anything happens to your computer, restoring lost files is easy…provided you have the right safeguards in place.

This short article is intended to demonstrate how easily you can back up, as well as restore your data when you use Carbonite — a service we use and recommend.

To restore a specific file or folder, simply open the Carbonite Backup Drive from your desktop.

Files and folders are organized in the backup drive exactly as they are on your computer. Locate the specific file or folder, right-click and select “restore.”

The file will be restored to its original location on your hard drive. You will also have the option of restoring the file to a new location, by selecting “Restore to…” or recovering a previous version of the file by selecting “Restore previous versions…”

If you need to restore everything in your backup to a new or repaired computer, go to carbonite.com and click the Restore tab to log in to your account and restore your files. The Carbonite Restore Wizard will help you restore all of your files to your new computer with just a few clicks.

How it Works

After installation, Carbonite scans the hard disk looking for files to back up. Carbonite automatically backs

up all file types except executables (such as .exe and .dll), system files, temporary files and video files.

However, any of the excluded file types can be manually added to the backup by right-clicking on the file and selecting “Back this up” from the Carbonite menu. Upon setup, Carbonite offers a wide array of options for customizing your backup, but 95% of Carbonite users prefer to stick with the default settings.

In the default settings, dots on files and folders show their backup status in a glance.

A green dot on a file or folder means it is selected for backup and that the backup copy is up-to-date.

A yellow dot means that the file or folder is selected for backup but awaiting backup because it is either new or has been modified since the last backup.

A green dot with a hole in the center (a “green donut”) on a folder means that the folder’s backup is up-to-date, but there are some files in the folder which are not selected for backup. If a file or folder has no dot, it means it is not selected for backup.