carbonite for backup

Using 10.9.2 and latest version of Carbonite. Their software on Mac OS X is problematic. I was using Carbonite on Windows 7 and no problems. With Mac OS X 10.9.2 it is terrible. I had to contact them twice to even get it to start backing up and then it started using 100% of my Intel i5 processor. The CPU was at 85 degree celsius due to the rogue process nature of Carbonite. I contacted billing to get a refund of what was left on subscription. No refund. Truly a poor implementation and I would look at BackBlaze or some other alternative. Either way you had better look a Carbon Copy Clone or Time Machine for system image since none of these online backup services handle your system files.

You shouldn't t just, primarily, rely on cloud, remote server storage services for storing your Mac's backups

You should concentrate on getting a direct,local and primary backup plan.

Remote server data storage should be a considered secondary or tertiary backup plan.

Here is a good,local backup plan.

Get an external hard drive that uses a fast data transfer connection. Depending on your Mac model, USB 3.0, Thunderbolt Or FireWire 800 external hard drive. Purchase and download a data cloning app such as CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper. Properly format this external drive for use with Mac OS X and use the data cloning app of your choice to make an exact and bootable copy of your Mac's working system and internal hard drive that will be exactly cloned to the external hard drive.

In the event, that something goes horribly wrong with your Mac, with a bootable, cloned, high speed ext hard drive, you can be back up and running from the ext. drive in minutes and can clone this good OS and data back to your internal drive, and, again, have your internal drive ( if it hasn't failed) back up to normal in minutes.

Needless to say, a good, local computer backup is a good thing!

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