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IDrive offers a free 5GB Basic plan and a variety of tiered plans in its IDrive Pro family. IDrive has a full stable of features including backup of locked files (files in use), back up external hard disks and logged drives, drag and drop file restoration, search and restore, versioning (up to 30 versions – and only the current version counts against storage limits), browser-based restore and backup management, and can even wake up the system for backups and shut it down afterwards (our personal favorite). IDrive also enables you to back up more than your plan allows for by charging you .50/GB per month. We took the free 5GB Basic Plan out for a gallop.
By default, IDrive is configured to back up data (up to the plan limits) from your desktop, as well as selected documents, music, pictures, and video folders. If you change your files frequently, you can enable continuous data protection to back up your files (up to 500MB) in real time. Otherwise, your files are backed up on a schedule you set with the Schedule Manager.
Selecting files and folders to back up with IDrive
Schedule Manager will edit existing backups or add new backups; to make changes, just click the Edit button. From the main Scheduler dialog, you can enable auto-pause and make other minor adjustments, set up email notifications, and access the program’s Preference tabs (click the “Under the Hood” button to see them).
IDrive’s Schedule Manager
You can manually adjust throttling, specify prompts for the destination folder, disable open file backup (enabled by default), and select various advanced scheduling options in the General preferences tab. The Exclude Files/folder tab displays currently-excluded folders and filetypes; you can right-click in each category to add additional file or folder types.
Because IDrive is not an “all-you-can-eat” backup service, it requires you to specify where you want to restore files, rather than assuming that you want to use their original locations for restoration. To make restoration easy, IDrive recommends you install and use the the IDrive Explorer plug-in. (Note: the plug-in should be installed after installing IDrive Classic and restarting).
The rest is cake: IDrive Explorer opens a Windows Explorer session with the drive(s) you have backed up in the main pane. To restore files or folders, just select and drag to the preferred location in the left pane. During the restore process, a progress dialog appears. Just as with Windows Explorer, you can start multiple drag-and-drop file copying processes.
IDrive offers a good balance of features and simplicity; you won’t need to make changes to the basic configuration to perform most tasks. It also provides good guidance for getting started, although like Acronis above, it also lacks smartphone capabilities.
SugarSync is more than just an online backup service; it’s designed to help you share digital media among your PC and mobile device with both Windows and MacOS X versions. On the mobile side, SugarSync plays well with a huge range of devices, including Blackberry, iPhone, Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile. We tried out the free 5GB plan.
SugarSync will initially ask you to select from a variety of icons to help identify your computers. An important note: while the default Express Setup selects the most common folders (desktop, documents, pictures, music); you’ll need to choose Advanced Setup to back up video files or other folders. To start the backup process, click Add Folders from This Computer, and select the folders to backup. To display this dialog later, click the Manage Sync Folders button from within SugarSync File Manager.
You can set up file synchronization, or access on additional computers, by installing the SugarSync Manager on that computer then logging in. As you add computers to your account (there’s no limit on the number of devices), each additional device is listed in the “Other Computers” portion of the dialog. To sync a particular folder to a particular device, just click the folder name, click the Sync button , and select the destination computer. For automatic syncing between computers, use the SugarSync Magic Briefcase which is a folder that is created on each computer: to instantly sync a file, copy, drag, or paste the file into the folder.
SugarSync Manage Sync Folders
To determine the status of file backups and to retrieve files, open SugarSync after starting the initial backup and the SugarSync File Manager (SSFM) appears. By default, it displays the status of the local device, but you can check the status of other devices.
SugarSync File Manager displaying backup status
Restoring selected files, is as easy as selecting them, chosing Export/Save As and a location. An added bonus: you can also use the My SugarSync website for folder and file downloading, photo sharing, and photo publishing to Facebook.
SugarSync’s other features can be use to share files through time-limited public links, synchronize devices (even when they’re offline), and set up your mobile device to automatically sync camera phone photos.
SugarSync offers an almost overwhelming number of ways to share and synchronize files between devices and it’s file synchronization and sharing, rather than a simple “set and forget” backup, that SugarSync does best. It also costs more than other subscription services, but the combination of cloud-based backup and multiplatform device synchronization may be worth it if you want easy access to your media no matter where you are or what device you use.
CrashPlan offers amazing flexibility for backup destinations and locations – for free! You can back up to your own external hard disks and friends’ computers (and they can back up to your computer), and you can select multiple destinations for the same backup for great redundancy. For this article, we used the 30-day free trial of CrashPlan+, which adds online backup, support for multiple backup sets, and better management.
CrashPlan offers a choice of destinations.
CrashPlan automatically selects your Windows user folder for backup, but you can add additional drives, files, and folders, including removable media, to your backup. Note: you must specifically select where you want to store your backups, even during the CrashPlan+ free trial: if you don’t specify online storage as a destination, CrashPlan+ will ignore it. Use the multi-tabbed Destinations part of the CrashPlan dialog to choose external drives, folders, and so on.
CrashPlan’s Settings tab enables you to tweak CPU usage, enable your friends to use your computer for backups, adjust network throughput, configure versioning, and customize backup security settings.
To restore data with CrashPlan or CrashPlan+, select Restore from the Crashplan program menu. A Windows Explorer-like dialog opens, displaying your backed-up files. By default, CrashPlan restores files to the Desktop. However, click the options located below the folder tree to select the original location or a folder on the desktop; you can also choose an older version of the file by date, and choose to overwrite or rename existing files with the same name. To see only deleted files, click the checkbox. Click Restore, and your file(s) are restored to the location you specified.
Restoring a file with CrashPlan.
UpdateStar is better known for its driver update services, but it also offers unlimited online backup service for home ($69.95/home, $169/business per year). See the Promotional page for competitive upgrade pricing for former users of other services including MozyHome, MozyPro, Carbonite, SOS Online Backup, Norton Online Backup.
UpdateStar supports backups from external drives, and offers a 30-day trial here.
With several distinct flavors of backup services to consider, as well as various options and features, start weighing the importance of various features – does your cloud backup have to have an option for your smartphone? Be easy enough to explain to Grandma? Provide really unlimited backup?
Unlimited backup plans provide the best deal for the money, but there’s a lot of variation in what you get as well as what you pay:
If you want the fastest data recovery possible (and don’t mind paying for it), we suggest Backblaze. Just keep in mind that restores require drag and drop or copy and paste extraction from ZIP files.
CrashPlan provides the greatest flexibility in backup destinations in its free service, and offers the bonus of cloud and local storage at a flat rate.
UpdateStar’s basic pricing is higher than BackBlaze or CrashPlan+, but its competitive upgrade offer makes it very competitive with others.
Carbonite offers access via smartphone and a very easy-to-understand user interface, but its limitations on drives and file selections mean that it, rather than you, are in control of your backup.
If you prefer a metered plan, here’s what we liked (and didn’t like)
SugarSync offers two programs in one with its support for cross-platform (Windows, MacOS, and smartphone) file sync as well as backup.
Although Mozy’s current pricing seems very steep compared to others, it provides free local backup.
IDrive offers email notification, but for easiest restoration, be sure to use the IDrive explorer.
Acronis Online Backup is a good supplement to True Image, but needs some debugging.
No matter which service appeals to you, be sure to take full advantage of the trials offered by each vendor. With so many choices, you’re sure to find one that works for you.
Comments are closed on this article
KingB
June 06, 2011 at 6:29am
I used Carbonit for a while but I stopped trusting them after they had problems on their servers. I've been trialling a new cloud based backup called Genie Timeline for a week now.
The backup stored on Amazon S3 and they support disaster recovery for complete system restore. They also have full management consol for all machines and reporting.
yodar44
April 26, 2011 at 1:58pm
your comparison did not address 2 important issues:
1. many backup systems throw away the file date info.
2. encryption: must be done before leaving my computer, with my control of the key
the only service that i have found that does both is JungleDisk/s3.
Mozy handles encryption properly, but didn't preserve file dates, at least the last time i checked.
mfineman3
April 11, 2011 at 1:22pm
Which services actually work?
For example:
I don't think any of the listed services do restore to bare metal.
At least one listed services doesn't handle Alternate Data Streams,
I'm not sure if any of the listed services handle Access Control Lists correctly.
I'm not sure if any of the listed services handle the extra dates and other
infomation in NTFS.
tuberb
April 06, 2011 at 5:25am
Carbonite's throttling doesn't kick in at 200GB, it is there from the start. I just made the mistake of signing up, and my initial backup of 80GB took 6 weeks to complete (which is more than I would consider to be "several days"). Complaints to tech support were met with finger pointing at my network and computer (FIOS 25mbps upload, reasonably fast PC that is always on) and ended up concluding that, "this is the deal, live with it".
stuffnstuff
March 01, 2011 at 11:52pm
Just remember that while Carbonite advertises itself as unlimited the reality is that after 200 GB your upload rate gets throttled dramatically (not by your internet service provider, but by Carbonite).
This speed cap imposed by Carbonite really makes it (almost) unusable for anyone who has large files and who has more than 200 GB to store.
NigalCunningham
February 27, 2011 at 11:23am
I tried some of the mentioned online-backup-services, like Mozy, Carbonite and Dropbox. All of them are very good. Now I now use Updatestar Online Backup, cause of the price and a good press reviews.
http://client.updatestar.com/en/onlinebackup/overview/
aarcane
February 25, 2011 at 6:34pm
Data caps are an Abomination, unless we as customers actually DO something (Like jump ship to higher priced fringe companies that provide unlimited services still), and refuse to come back to our mainstream ISPs unless they provide a reasonably priced unlimited plan, nothing will change.
As for using WHS, the problem with maintaining your own home fileserver for backups is disaster recovery. sure you're protected against common maladies such as drive failure or controller failure, you're NOT protected from proper disasters such as Fire, Flood, Meteor Strike, Breakins, etc.. What will you do when someone forgets to turn off the oven and the house burns down in the night, but the report backed up to your WHS is still due tomorrow?
Even if you can't afford a proper online backup solution, like S3, or one of these mediocre services, you should still obtain some "Offsite Storage" such as a safe deposit box or storage unit to perform physical offsite backups to. If you're using a linux based system, your best bet is to deploy ZFS, which provides most of the benefits of WHS, PLUS a bunch of more important benefits (like replication, deduplication, raid5 without write-hole, and end-to-end integrity verification), then use ZFS Send /receive to push your backups to a few spare drives, which you then take to your offsite location. Using amanda+S3, I just backup my encrypted nightlies to amazon, and forget about it.
axiomatic
February 25, 2011 at 1:22pm
With the data caps most ISP's are imposing lately I fail to se ehow these services remain in business. I use a Windows Home Server to back up my home because with just the main PC's of my family equaling 8 I am (incrementally) backing up over 200GB worth of data. Sure once the first one is complete the incremental backups are far less in size but it just boggles my mind that these cloud storage comapnies and streaming companies like Netflix are freaking out. (Well Netflix finally came out against the caps but thats really new news.)
TechLarry
February 25, 2011 at 9:13am
I think a Windoss Home Server with a couple of 2TB drives is a far better investment, especially with WHS 2011 coming out.
And no crying about DE please. Just roll your own...
The WHS backup system is brilliant. It is one of the few that will do bare-metal restores simply by booting the dead machine from the recovery disk, and selecting the backup you want to restore from.
Single Instance Store saves tremendous amounts of disc space.
And the remote media streaming capabilities of WHS 2011 are very good.
Take an old box, get an OEM copy when it is releasead, toss a couple of drives in it, and have at it. You can build one hell of a server for $400 or even less.
Xtomik
February 24, 2011 at 8:50pm
Maybe it's one click harder to find, but it is right here:
https://mozy.com/home/free/
It's presented as a trial version of MozyHome, but it is still a free 2GB backup service. I just set up someone on it last week.
AndySocial
February 24, 2011 at 8:46pm
I'm continually amazed that so many "comprehensive" reviews of backup programs omit Crashplan, which is one of the most flexible options out there.
haqattaq
February 24, 2011 at 8:09pm
You guys totally forgot Backblaze, Crashplan, and SpiderOak.
Please take down this mediocre review and redo for Maximum sake.
Your street cred is in question!
aarcane
February 24, 2011 at 6:53pm
I couldn't help but notice that none of these services offer a good linux client. I'll stick to amanda + S3 until someone comes up with a decent linux client. At least this way I have a unified cross-platform backup solution.
Jer Stryker
February 24, 2011 at 5:38pm
I switched to Crashplan when Mozy dropped their unlimited plan. It's better than Mozy ever was! (You don't even need to keep your external drive hooked up for it to remember to keep the files backed up.)
ABouman
February 24, 2011 at 5:32pm
Phooey. We liked MozyFree. Oh well... thanks for the update, we've corrected the story.
jaymz668
February 24, 2011 at 5:25pm
Mozy is no longer unlimited, Carbonite does not backup videos by default, and they don't make it obvious. So good luck getting those baby videos back if you have a hard drive crash and are depending on carbonite.
Crashplan is the best bang for the buck when you have multiple PCs and people in the house, their family plan is awesome
Pball1224
February 24, 2011 at 5:23pm
What an odd writeup. You guys don't usualy take such a promotional standpoint for one peticular service over another.
Also, Mozy is no longer Unlimited, they just changed their rate schedule, making them too expensive for me now.
I've been reading about BackBlaze.com which is unlimited and seems quite affordable, but I haven't tried it yet.
reutnes
February 24, 2011 at 4:17pm
Mozy no longer has Unlimited! Stick with Carbonite if you want that.
It should also be noted that a cloud backup should not be your only backup! If you do any kind of work on your computer you'll want to have an on-site backup as well. NAS boxes are good choices as they can be configured to backup over the network automagically, but a large external drive wouldn't be such a bad thing either.
As we say in the business, data you don't back up twice is data you don't care about. But I'll gladly take your coin to try and recover it.
jtrpop
February 24, 2011 at 4:09pm
Why not include CrashPlan?! They are the best around for local, offsite with friends, and cloud based unlimited backup. Also, Mozy ditched their unlimited.
