403 of 994 gb
https://www.macworld.com/article/2495742/icloud-drive-review.html
Read more about iCloud here: What is iCloud and how to use it.
features
.dmg disk images: Yes, IDrive can back up .dmg disk images;
Backups are kept for 30 days
restoring your data
You can view individual files and choose which ones to download.
Mobile
Locate your Computer service
It allows you to continually backup your entire drive to the cloud
drag and drop files to the cloud to access remotely.
back up external hard drives.
More than one device
iDrive
Basic: Free;
IDrive Mini: $2.95 (100GB) | $9.95 (500GB) a year;
IDrive Personal: $69.65 (5TB) a year; 5TB of Cloud Backup at $99.50 $24.88 for the first year.
The IDrive Personal account supports one user, multiple computers, and offers 5TB of online storage at $69.95 for the first year, and full details as to account offerings and pricing can be found on IDrive’s website. If you opt for the Personal plan you can use IDrive for multiple devices – there’s no limit per account.
Pros
Fast online uploads and stable performance.
Excellent for the price, especially where online storage is concerned.
No device limit.
Cons
User interface could use additional elements to show how much time has passed and how much time is remaining for a given task.
Strange permissions bug.
Web app not as sleek as could be.
lDrive is a backup utility that handles both local and web/cloud-based backups (similar to Backblaze and Carbonite). It allows you to continually backup your entire drive to the cloud, while also letting you drag and drop files to the cloud to access remotely. lDrive also allows you to back up external hard drives.
lDrive’s user interface is very straightforward. Your Desktop, Documents, Music and Pictures folders are automatically selected for backup, along with the contents of ~/Library/Mail.
Features like Rewind and Snapshots allow you to restore from earlier versions of files or snapshots of the complete data set.
To add other folders, click ‘Change’ at the bottom of the window – that’s not exactly intuitive. You can add videos to the backup, but locating them in lDrive’s interface can be complicated.
Both scheduling and restoring are straightforward, however. As is choosing a local drive as the destination for a backup in place of lDrive’s servers.
All data is encrypted, with the option to set your own private encryption key.
You have the choice of restoring by having data physically shipped to you. This is free for the first restore each year, but if you are based outside the US you’ll have to pay for shipping.
The subscription-based tier system offers a free Basic account with 10GB of online disk space for free with no credit or debit card required. That 10GB free tier allows for local backups and is pretty generous, but the real steal is the $2.95 (£2.32) per year IDrive Mini plan. That’s not a typo, either; for less than 3 bucks a year you can get access to 100GB of storage. That can be expanded to 500GB for $9.95 (£7.84) per year.
lDrive’s free tier and the ability to spread your data allocation in the paid tiers across multiple computers makes it attractive. Overall, though, it’s expensive for a single machine.
Read our full IDrive review
Backups can be scheduled, files can be excluded from them, and an Archive Cleanup tool maximizes your cloud storage by matching items 1:1 to delete that you don’t have on your Mac anymore, ensuring you’re not cluttering it up with old files.
As is IDrive’s tradition, the company still offers its IDrive Express program, in which IDrive will send along a hard drive for you to borrow, whereupon you can back up the data, ship it back to the company via a prepaid box, and IDrive will place the data on their servers for you. This becomes that much more useful if dozens or hundreds of terabytes of data need to be backed up and there’s only so much available time or bandwidth to work with.
Problems
It seems churlish to nitpick with such excellent value on offer, but I found the web app side of IDrive to be much slower than more dedicated file-sharing options like Google Drive, OneDrive, or iCloud Drive. A couple of times I had to refresh the page as it slowed to a crawl, and the design looks a little dated for my tastes – although that could be a more personal thing.
Important note on Cloud Drive: Usage of Cloud Drive functionality requires separate activation. Cloud Drive is a separate service distinct from cloud backup. Cloud Drive sync functionality can be activated from the desktop or the Web application.
Backblaze
Backblaze backs up the contents of your Documents, Pictures, Movies and Music folders, but excludes your Applications folder. Backblaze also excludes some file types from being backed up, such as .dmg disk images – that restriction can be switched off, however.
Backups are kept for 30 days, so you can restore from any that ran during that time. Data is encrypted and you can optionally add a six-digit passcode to provide an additional layer of security.
When it comes to restoring your data, you have three options: you can restore via Backblaze’s web interface or you can have files sent to you on a USB stick or hard drive for an additional fee. And there’s a 100% refund if you return the USB stick or hard drive within 30 days, though you’ll have to pay shipping and taxes.
You can view individual files and choose which ones to download. And you can view and share backed up files on an iPhone or iPad with the Backblaze mobile app.
The Locate your Computer service tracks your Mac’s location to help you find it if it’s stolen – similar to Find My. If a lost Mac is still running backups your Mac can tell you its current IP address and show you recently backed-up data.
Backblaze’s user interface comprises a menu bar item and a System Preferences pane. However, that pane is more like a fully fledged application, with options to exclude files, add folders and disks to the backup, and throttle bandwidth. It’s simple and very Mac-like.
If you only need to back up one Mac, and particularly if you want to back up external disks, Backblaze’s simplicity and price give it the edge over Carbonite and IDrive.
With Backblaze you can back up your Mac for $9 (approx £7) a month or $99/year (approx £78), data is stored in secure data centres and two-factor authentication adds an extra level of security.
Read our full Backblaze review
No storage limit.
Comprehensive backups.
Private Encryption options
Payment per machine
Backblaze exists for a very specific purpose, and it does that job brilliantly – just don’t expect to share files with it.
While you could share a file with Backblaze, doing so requires using Backblaze’s separate B2 Cloud Storage service which, admittedly, comes with flexible, pay-as-you-go options.
At $99 per year, it’s pretty affordable, and there’s no storage limit – you can keep backing up and it’ll keep duplicating, and there’s no size limit on individual files. It’s worth noting that that’s $99 per computer, so you’ll be doubling that for two machines, but if you’re using just one machine it’s well worth looking into.
while the app offers three months of version history by default. At the time of writing, you can extend this to 12 months at no extra cost, which is welcome.
The other app is the restore side of things, and I’m impressed by the granularity with which you can drill down into its file system. The app offers your backup as a list of nested folders, and you can work your way to whatever you need, or restore the whole thing.
but there’s no Finder window integration here, so you’ll be relying on the aforementioned duo of apps.
That makes sense, since you can’t quickly ferry data and documents between users like you can with a more straightforward cloud storage app as we mentioned earlier.
Versioning
The default versioning for files is 30 days. You can keep as many versions of a file as you want. After the 30-day mark, the oldest version of any given file will be deleted. Once you purchase a license, you can change the version history to one year or keep each version of a file forever. Any file version that’s more than a year old costs $0.006 per GB per version. This charge is on a per-month basis and is cost-effective, unless you have an entire repository of old file versions you don’t want to delete.
Locate My Computer
The “locate my computer” feature is an option in the sidebar in your account. It’s an odd feature, as its primary purpose is to help you locate your computer if it goes missing or is stolen. You can even map your computer’s location with the “map this” option.
Share Files
Backblaze lets you share any file from your backup with registered and unregistered users by creating a shareable link that you can paste into an email or a message. It’s a simplified experience but has a huge catch: You’ll need to enable Backblaze B2 cloud storage. Additionally, there are no settings for links — you either share the link or delete it.
Like Backblaze, you can try B2 cloud storage for free, but you will incur a separate cost to continue using it if you go past 10GB of total storage or 1GB of downloads per day. The “share files” feature isn’t a replacement for what a dedicated cloud storage service can do.
If you want to use an online service primarily to share files, there are better options than Backblaze. Check out our article on the best Backblaze alternatives for a detailed look at other online backup options.
NO: External Drive Backup
NO: NAS Backup
NO: Mobile Device Backup
Backblaze Pricing Plan Breakdown: Cost & Cloud Storage Capacity
Backblaze has a clear and upfront pricing structure: Each computer costs $9 per month to back up. A year costs $99, representing a $9 savings, and it costs $189 for two years, representing a $27 savings. You’ll get one license for a single device, though you can purchase more licenses for additional computers.
Devices like network-attached storage (NAS) and servers are not supported.
Yes, Backblaze is safe. It encrypts data at rest and in transit using AES 128-bit encryption and protects transfers with SSL. You can learn more about SSL in our SSL vs TLS guide. Backblaze does have a private encryption key that you can enable. However, as you will see in the privacy section, it’s not completely private.
We should note that Backblaze does not use the more secure AES 256-bit encryption that is standard on most cloud-based offerings. This shouldn’t be a problem, as 128-bit is still very secure.
85 % – Very Good
Backblaze does a good job with privacy, offering optional private key encryption and an easy-to-understand privacy policy. Zero-knowledge encryption is off by default — you must enable it through the desktop app. More worryingly, it is not true private encryption, as you have to hand over your encryption key to restore your data.
Most of Backblaze’s data centers are located in the United States, a nation that does not put user data privacy at the forefront thanks to some of its government-friendly privacy laws. However, you have the option of choosing an EU data center when you sign up for an account.
Zero-Knowledge Encryption
You can create a private encryption key (PEK) in the “security” tab in the desktop client. If you do so, you will need it whenever you decrypt your data. Only you will know your PEK — for the most part. Whenever you need to restore your data, you must send your PEK to Backblaze, which goes against the principle of zero-knowledge encryption.
Zero-knowledge encryption works by encrypting and decrypting data on your device before it is transferred to remote servers so nobody but you can see that data. With Backblaze, the decryption process takes place on its servers during restoration, which is not true zero-knowledge encryption.
IDrive is a natural comparison to Backblaze, as both are online backup providers that offer cloud storage services. One of the biggest differences between the two services is that IDrive lets you back up multiple devices with one account, including mobile devices and other options besides your computer. We put the two services head to head in our IDrive vs Backblaze comparison.
Security and privacy is where Backblaze falls behind and IDrive excels.
Anyone who uses network attached storage (NAS) should also choose IDrive.
Something else you might not normally consider is whether cloud backup services can replace your cloud storage software. While we stop short of claiming that IDrive beats out providers like Sync.com and pCloud, if you’re looking for a basic way to sync data or some file sharing features, IDrive can cover you.
Syncing files between devices is as simple as going into the “sync” tab in the IDrive desktop app. There, you can turn on file synchronization and navigate to the IDrive sync folder. All your devices will then receive these files.
Although IDrive beats Backblaze in most features, this isn’t always the case. While both services keep previous versions of your files, IDrive is limited to 30 file versions while Backblaze is limited to 30 days. The two services are comparable, assuming one file version per day, except Backblaze lets you pay $2 per month to extend your file versioning to a full year.
If you’re interested in how our winner compares to CrashPlan — another top-tier online backup service — be sure to read our CrashPlan vs IDrive comparison. You can also check out our IDrive vs Carbonite and Backblaze vs Dropbox comparison guides.
https://www.carbonite.com/personal/how-to/how-to-backup-computer/
https://www.cloudwards.net/what-is-nas/
iCloud
https://support.apple.com/en-us/109344?cid=mc-ols-icloud-article_ht206985-macos_ui-02202023