Can I use Carbonite to move my documents and music to a new computer?

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October 8th, 2009 - Posted by Kent

The following post in our Reader Question series is an actual user submitted question. To maintain the integrity of the original question, we do not edit or change reader questions in any way.

Q: We are buying a new computer. Can we use carbonite to back up our documents and music and then recover to the new computer? We don't intend to use the old computer once we install the new one

A: Earlier this week a reader wrote in with a similar question, asking if Carbonite online backup could be used to facilitate a complete migration to a new machine. We won't repeat too much of what we said there, but to summarize: yes, you can, though it's a bit slower than with a direct connection, due to network speeds and the necessities of encrypting and decrypting the data.

Here's something we didn't say: once you move your data, you're not done. First, be sure all your data was transferred successfully and there's nothing else (such as preferences or email messages) that you'll miss. Secondly, you have to securely erase that old hard drive. There's a good article over at Microsoft.com that discusses this process in much greater depth, but third-party disc reformatting software is probably your best bet (that or physical destruction of the drive itself).

Not erasing that hard drive could leave you open to identity theft. If you sell, donate, or throw away that old laptop (and really, you shouldn't throw it away—that's bad for the earth) your data is out there.