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Carbonite Convulsions.

For while I have been wanting to get Carbonite. But not for the reason most people do. You see I wanted to upgrade my computer. Carbonite seemed to be the only way. Since an almost catastrophic hard drive failure a couple of years ago, I have running a RAID array. A mirrored array in which I used two hard drives to copy each other automatically. One fails, I just slip in a new and go. My set up was a C drive array and a spare drive array. This actually saved my but a week later when one of the brand new Velociraptor crapped out. The other one was still good, A quick trade for a new one I was back in business.

Great, however, I wanted a Blu-ray player. All the Blu-ray player I could find used SATA. But, I had all four SATA ports used up on my motherboard. I was stuck using IDE channels for my DVDs. I had tried using SATA DVD, but with the RAID turned on, the DVDs became part of the array. If I put a movie in, the computer would lock up until I ejected the disk. I had to restart the computer every time I changed out movies or installed a new program from a disk. Also I needed the other two ports for my spare drives. I did try an add-on SATA card, but it wouldn't work.

Then along came Carbonite. I been hearing about this for some time. I thought to my self: "Self, I could back up my most important files to the net, and therefore I could turn off the RAIDs and install the Blu-ray. And Self, do my lips move when I think to myself?"

Okay, I need to digress and explain why I am not using the obvious solution to online backup: this site. I found out the hard way I can't. I tired to upload a game for a guy to download. (For some reason I seem to be the only one in the world that has a copy of this game.) A problem popped up: the server kept timing out. If I couldn't upload a simple 132 MB file, I wouldn't be able to upload all my music. I found another way. Also, don't worry, the game was a free trial demo anyway. No harm no foul.

So I decided on Carbonite. I sign up for the free trial and get instantly confused. I wish I could get screen shots, I should have at the time. From memory I recall seeing buttons you have to slide back and forth to get the type of backup you want. I was confused. Probably I'm so used to the mass crap Microsoft throws at me that something as simple as Carbonite's how do you want to do your backup screen had me going "Which way do they go, George?"

I should have paid a little closer attention, the trial doesn't backup music, videos, or apps. After watching it for two days upload all the stuff I choose I went ahead and bought it. This is where it gets frustrating. I had to go to each folder and find a file that wasn't backed up and select it manually. Some like the music folder was easy I just do a mass highlight. Others, like this site's flash files I had to do a search and then highlight. Okay, why am I backing up this site on Carbonite? Why not. As Tom Griswold would say, "There's somebody laying on a slab in the morgue who wasn't paranoid enough."

I had to go through every damn folder to make sure every damn file of whatever had a damn dot on it. Dammit.

After a week of constantly having my computer on day and night I was finally done. Now can I upgrade? Sure.

I turn the RAID array off. Reboot and see in My Computer just the C Drive. No spare. Over to Computer Management I can see it there, but it said the drive needed to be initialized. Okay, sure. Blanked it out. And I was blanking myself out. Blanking out all the cursing that ensued.

I digress again.

WHAT IN THE NAME OF BELLDANDY WOULD MAKE ME THINK THAT THIS WOULD WORK!?

When I installed Windows Seven, It didn't read my CPU correctly. I needed to flash my BIOS. When I did it turned off the RAID arrays and I saw four hard drives in My Computer. All were fine and had all the info intact. Reboot with the RAID turned on. Go to Computer Management and initialize the spare drive array and everything was fine.

It wasn't bad. I mean the web site and music was on the C Drive and everything else important was on Carbonite. I had lost other stuff. Most notably all the Foamy the Squirrel videos dating back to the beginning. I could re-download them all, but that would be a major pain.

I did do one smart thing: when I turned off the RAID arrays, I unplugged the secondary hard drives. I took out the one spare, figuring if I plugged it back in Windows would screw it up, and put it in an external enclosure. Windows said it was no good.

WHAT!?

Windows said it was no good.

I heard me the first time, jackass.

I don't give up that easy. I go and get my spare computer. One that I used to help me out a couple of years ago when the hard drive failed. (You can read about it in my essay Overcoming XP. Not now!) I currently had Vista on it, or so I thought. It had been more than thirty days It would only let me contact Microsoft to get a new key. Bugger!

I need to re-install. XP? Vista? 7?

(How about Linux?)

Worked like a Swiss, car. Downloaded everything onto an external drive, that had been sitting behind the entire time that I was blanking that blanking hard drive with blanking Windows.

Finally the benefit analysis.

Having a web backup of my files is great. What if my computer is stolen, or my place burns down, or one of Leo Laporte's cosmic rays hits it? Power savings is something to consider. I'm saving no money because Carbonite costs more than the power bill for four hard drives. But, my power supply isn't being worked as much with only two hard drives, plus I now have two extra drives not being ground to dust that can be fired up when needed. Boot up time is greatly reduced because I don't have the RAID BIOS to wait through. And my system is noticeably faster now that it isn't being bogged down with constant mirroring.

The Blu-ray. Yes, we have finally come full circle. I tell you what, Star Trek 11 looks great.

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