At the prodding of his professor, Chunta had been using CDs and USB flash drives to back up his work, but he admits to being undisciplined and not backing up often enough. Even so, Chunta says he had more than 100 iterations of the dissertation and related research files.

So one day, while listening to a Carbonite ad that had been playing ad nauseam on the radio in his school's laboratory, he decided to try it. Chunta says he couldn't have been more pleased with his experience, particularly because he isn't computer savvy and the service was practically "plug and play."

"Often, we're juggling a lot of different pieces of information, project proposals and grant submissions, and seeing how it all fits together. Having to remember where and how all the data is backed up amounts to mental minutiae," says Chunta, who is on a fellowship at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.

Carbonite is among a handful of consumer storage services that are essentially just hard drives in the cloud -- simple, no-muss-no-fuss services. And the formula has worked for Boston-based Carbonite. Even through the recession, the company has grown its revenue at least 36% quarter over quarter.

"It's targeted at consumers and small businesses with probably 10 to 50 employees. The idea was simple: Pay $55 a year, and we back up all your data," says Carbonite CEO David Friend.