Carbonite is an online back-up service rather than a storage device attached to your PC locally. As such, you get both the online storage and some rather nifty software.

If you accept the default of backing up the Documents and Settings folder, then you need do nothing other than install the software. If you want to have more control over what's backed up, then you do this through Windows Explorer.

Once Carbonite is installed, right-click on any file or folder and you'll discover there's now an option that enables you to specify whether or not you want it to be backed up.

Backups take place automatically and the status is indicated by coloured icons next to the files and folders in Explorer. When you first start using Carbonite it might show that files are awaiting backup for a day or so, but afterwards files are backed up fairly quickly.

Your online backup storage shows up in Windows Explorer, where it appears just like a disk drive under My Computer. This means that restoring files is a simple matter of dragging them from the Carbonite backup drive to your required destination.