Top 3 Online Backup Solutions
Backups are a must have for all computer users. As much as we rely on our laptops and desktops every single day, there is no denying that it might just stop working the next minute. It is always a good idea to have all your work and your favorite memories backed up. Several ways of backing up might seem a bit confusing at first. After all, who wants to spend a hundred or so dollars on an external hard drive and then go though the hassle of setting up backup software and determine a schedule to backup the data from your computer. Online backups bypass all the hassle. Nowadays there are a few services which offer cheap unlimited online backup solutions which will suit any budget and all computers with an internet access.
Mozy
Mozy is one of those really easy to use software liked by the average user as well as the IT geek. Right off the bat Mozy offers a 2GB free account for storing anything and everything. The automated backup software works as advertised and takes the hassle of manually uploading your files and folders. What happens if you need more than 2GB? Mozy offers an unlimited online backup solution for less than $5 a month. You can also go for the yearly subscription for about $55 with 1 month free or a biennial subscription will set you back a little over $100 and comes with 3 months free.
What can you expect with a Mozy account?
Security of the data is taken seriously with 128-bit SSL support and multiple encryption schemes to choose from to ensure your data remains impenetrable. The automatic backup feature with scheduling will enable you to set the backup to run at 10PM or 2AM or whatever time you wish. The incremental backups allow only the changes to files to be backed up instead of transferring the whole file each time. This saves on bandwidth and time. If that is not enough Mozy also features a bandwidth throttling mechanism where you can limit the amount of traffic that Mozy can use at any time. This feature comes in handy if Mozy backup are cutting in to your YouTube video streaming. Mozy also supports multiple versions of your files and can revert back to any of the past 30 file revisions. Mozy supports Windows and Mac’s but not Linux for now.
Mozy also has an affiliate program where you can earn a few bucks if you refer a few friends. It is not offered automatically and my application is currently waiting for Mozy’s approval process.
Carbonite
Carbonite is another unlimited online backup provider. Unlike Mozy though Carbonite does not offer a free 2GB account. They do provide a free 15-day trial subscription which you have to renew to continue using the service. Costs are comparative to Mozy at about $55 per year with discounts applied for 2 and 3year subscriptions. Some of the highlights of Carbonite are the small application which tags files and folders for upload and automatically gets to work to backup. Similar to Mozy, Carbonite offers clients for both Mac and PC and has an extensive support section with several tutorials and easy to follow guides.
The affiliate program for Carbonite is quite impressive. It allows affiliates to earn 40% commission for every sale. It is offered through Commission Junction which you would have to sign up for separately. However my application was automatically rejected for unknown reasons. So best of luck if you are planning on selling Carbonite.
IDrive
The major difference between IDrive and the rest is that IDrive does not offer “unlimited” disk space. You get 2 flavors of IDrive – Basic and Pro. Basic comes with free 2GB online disk space for your backup needs. With a Pro account you get 150 GB of storage space at $4.95 per month or $49.50 per year. The feature set of IDrive is well equipped with a Windows Explorer like interface which is known to about 90% of computer users. By default IDrive automatically selects and backs up the most commonly used folders such as the Documents, Pictures and Videos. You can also run the backup feature to “sync” between folders on your computer and on the cloud about every 10 minutes and keeps older revisions of documents for up to 30 versions of the same files. The Search & Restore function is a very nice utility to replace accidentally deleted files or something that has been overwritten. But the best feature common to all the online backup solutions is the ability to restore files and access to backed up data from any computer capable of accessing the internet. You can check out the demo here.
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