Carbonite backup for my MacBook Pro?

Question

Do I need to subscribe to Carbonite or is there a better way to backup my Macbook Pro?

Answer 1

Adding to or extending what Allan may use, there are a number of backup approaches. First off, note that you will need to acquire one or more external hard disk drives in where you will store your backups. The bigger you get, the more successive backups you will be able to put in them before they fill up. The faster you get, the sooner the backup process will conclude and you can return to using the Mac; it is unwise to use the computer for anything else while a backup is being performed.
MacOS X already includes Time Machine, that can carry out automated backups onto a backup device. Apple even sells you their expensive hardware to do so; the Time Capsule. TM can be set to do the backups when you're away, as long as the computer is powered up. These backups are of incremental type; the first one backs up the whole drive, the next one just the files that changed since the first, and so forth.
Another kind of backup is a clone. This creates an exact copy of the disk and is even bootable. You can use Disk Utility as a rudimentary clone creator; the clones produced work fine, but there is scant control of what's going on. The Restore tab in DU creates clones by specifying the Macintosh HD boot volume as the source and the external drive as the destination.
Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! are cloning utilities that offer much finer controls. They can be used for free or activated when purchased to get more features.
Lastly, you can always back up files by dragging them from one drive to another.
If you purchase a very large external drive for backups, you can always partition it and place different backups in separate partitions.