Carbonite

Best Price:
Carbonite and Silver Award-winner MozyHome do pretty much the same thing, but their look and feel is very different. Where MozyHome slides into the background, blending as much as possible with Windows, Carbonite has a purple interface that could hardly stand out more. But despite the attention-grabbing colour scheme, its interface is streamlined and easy to use.

Install the software and you’re guided through the process of choosing what you want to save online, after which Carbonite will start transferring the files to its servers. If you’ve chosen to back up a lot of files (and you may as well, since you’ve got unlimited space to play with) then you can expect the process to take days, maybe even weeks. However, the software will get on with the job each time you start your PC.

From here on, there’s no real need for you to revisit the configuration, though you can tweak the scheduling if there are particular times you’d like the back-up to run. You can view progress via red or green blobs, which appear on each file and folder that’s either backed up or scheduled to be. Once your files are online, they can be accessed through an Explorer window – just as if they were in were a folder on your Desktop. There’s also a restore wizard that can help you get a bulk of files back if you lose a lot.

Although we have a mild preference for the way MozyHome looks, Carbonite is simpler to use and a little bit cheaper, although you do have to pay for an entire year in advance.