I’ve been realizing lately just how much of my life lives on this laptop. Music, videos, pictures, documents, all valuable data some of which is unique and might not be able to be recovered should something happen to my laptop. I never worried a lot about losing data when I used a desktop PC because I figured should my PC fail I could always pull the hard drive and install it into a new PC. Of course the hard drive could fail, but most of the times when my computers went up in smoke the hard drives survived.

A laptop, however, is a different story. Should this thing fail I wouldn’t know where to begin in an attempt to recover its hard drive and the data stored on it. I’m sure it can be done, but I’m certain it wouldn’t be as easy as it is on a desktop PC. So this has gotten me to ponder whether I should subscribe to an online backup service.

The advantages: My data can be backed up in a remote location where it can be recovered should my hardware fail or get stolen. The data should remain there for as long as I need it (and continue to pay the subscription fee) and the data should be secure. If I buy a new laptop I should be able to download all of my data onto it (I continue to use the word ‘should’ because I can’t say I’m 100% sure on how all this works and how reliable these services are).

My important and valuable data will be backed up automatically without me having to put forth any effort. This will lead to peace of mind as I’ll know that if something were to go wrong I wont one day have a sick feeling in my stomach as I realize all of the data I’ve lost permanently. Music can mostly be downloaded again (especially with iCloud) and most of my pictures exist in various locations across the web (Facebook, Instagram, Flickr) but trying to gather all of this might prove challenging. I might be able to get most of it back, but what about the stuff I don’t even know I have now? I’m sure there’s some long forgotten pictures, videos or files of some sort lost somewhere on my laptop that I haven’t seen in years. I might not miss it now, but maybe some day I’d really wish I had these files.

I must apologize for the random spewing of thoughts above. I’m tired and opened this box and just started typing. Anyway, I’m going to be setting up Carbonite to give it a 15 day trial and might consider purchasing the $59/yr plan (which offers unlimited storage space, there are more expensive plans with more extensive benefits). I’m not sure what I’ll learn from this trial as I hope my laptop doesn’t fail in the next 15 days causing me to need to recover all of my files, but if the software is easy to use and efficient I’ll probably end up subscribing so I can stop worrying about having to one day try to rebuild my entire digital life.