Software : Buying Guide: 6 of the best online backup services for Mac |
| Buying Guide: 6 of the best online backup services for Mac Posted: 18 Feb 2011 03:05 AM PST  Keeping your data backed up is second nature to many Mac users simply because of Time Machine. Those who never made a copy of their digital data now have a reliable and invisible fallback. Of course, a belt-and-braces approach of Time Machine and another external drive copy is the recommended regime. That might sound over the top, but losing every byte of data is much more painful than keeping track of two backups. A double backup is a good idea, but does suffer from one fatal flaw: both copies are, generally, in one place. Unless you back up at the end of every day and take your backup 'off-site', all your data is still at risk. Fire, flood or – less catastrophic but still data-destroying – electrical surges and wayward cups of tea are all capable of destroying a hard drive. So what is the solution to this issue? Storing your backups online, obviously. Until recently though, remote data storage was the preserve of big businesses. However, you can now feasibly have a home backup procedure that includes a totally secure off-site element. With an off-site backup, no matter what the disaster you can recover your data. Fire, flood, swarm of locusts – never again will your data be at risk. We've put six of the best online backup tools to the test. Tools on test 1. Backblaze - $5 per month (£3.20) Test one - Value for money
Naturally, your data is priceless and no amount of money is too much to protect it. In the real world, however, just about everything has a price. None of the services could be described as prohibitively expensive though. Here the clear loser is iDrive, with its $5 (£3.16) a month charge limited to just 100GB of data. It does offer 2GB for free, which is fine for smaller storage needs, but not for a full backup. Backblaze, Carbonite, CrashPlan and Mozy offer unlimited storage for your monthly fees. You can pay for a number of years up-front to reduce costs further. However, CrashPlan gets extra points for offering a family pack solution that allows you to back up your house full of Macs for $120 (£76) a year. The clear winner here, however, is Livedrive, which for £3.95 a month enables not only unlimited storage, but also unlimited numbers of computers to be backed up. That is truly excellent value.
Test two - Interface
One of the good things about all the tools in this test is that once they are set up they're all but invisible. Sure, you'll notice a hard disk spinning up and every now and again, and catch the toolbar notifications. In general, however, there's nothing to do other than sit back and let your data be backed up. This, then, was a really tough call to make, as each of the backup utilities took a similar though not identical approach to organising and editing backups. We docked a few marks from Livedrive and iDrive for a more fussy approach. Livedrive lists every single file being uploaded as it works, which is nice, but a simple progress counter would do. iDrive has a sync option that could easily confuse the non-techie user. But these criticisms are of the minor niggle variety. Forced to make a decision, we'd err on the side of CrashPlan. It's just a little clearer than the others. That little bit is tiny, though, and not a major advantage over the competition.
Test three - Data retrieval
Uploading all your files to a remote server is great, but the real test is retrieving them if you ever have that disastrous flood or your computer is stolen. The best service here in terms of flexibility is the plan from Backblaze. Not only can you download your files in a ZIP archive, you can have your backup shipped to you on DVD or USB. This is great if you need to get your data back in the fastest way possible. Naturally, you'll have to pay for international shipping on top of the $99 (£63) for DVDs or $189 (£120) for a 400GB hard disk, but if you're downloading a lot of data it's likely to be much faster. The rest of the services here offer online retrieval tools. Carbonite is next best, with its Restore Assistant that manages all your file retrieval automatically. You can still pick and choose which files to get back manually if you want, but if it's a full restore the assistant takes the pain out the procedure. Each of the rest offers simple online file restoration tools.
Test four - Extras
The main process of backing up your Mac is clearly the most important aspect of each of the tools, but those hidden extras all add value. We really like the flexible CrashPlan approach that enables you to back up to any remote computer. This allows you to create your own off-site backup. Save your work computer's documents to your home Mac and vice versa. It alone makes the client incredible value for money. Also its Backup Sets can be split between online and local storage. The Livedrive Briefcase feature lets you email documents to be synced across your machines, and you can access your files from an iPhone too, as well as streaming any music or video you have stored online. Simply install the Livedrive app and you can be watching movies on your iPad without taking up that precious disk space. Backblaze, Carbonite, iDrive and Mozy are less expandable in comparison, offering just the simple backup tools.
The Winner - Best online backup service for Mac All the services here work well if you've only got a modest amount of data to upload. No matter which one takes your fancy, the end result will be a reliable and safe backup, and that's all that really matters. iDrive is a touch pricey by comparison to the others, but the rest are all roughly equivalent. We liked the invisibility of Backblaze and Mozy, where the clients are unfussy and just get on with the job at hand.
But ultimately, our winner is CrashPlan. It's solid, easy to use and reliable. It also offers the most flexible client with the best extra features. The $120 (£76) family pack feature is amazing value in comparison to the others on test here too. As such, it fully deserves our top spot. |
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