I used to be rather proud of my generational backup system, and my techniques for off site storage, until I accidentally formatted my backup drive proving that no backup solution is idiot-proof.
After spending almost $150 to purchase hard drive recovery software (File Recovery from Seagate is also highly recommended), I figured that spending $50/month was not such a bad investment after all.
As an inveterate comparison shopper, I began my quest by running a Google search for reviews on all available online backup solutions.
Note that I wasn’t merely looking for an online file storage solution – I wanted to be assured that my system was going to be backed up regularly – whether or not it was a conscious action on my part.
Google apprised me of the obvious choices – there were Mozy, Carbonite, and a bevy of others.
However, the one that caught my eye, and which I decided to go with was iDrive. While there were not too many comments/reviews for this service, there were a few features that simply made it a no-brainer.
First, iDrive is one of the rare services that let you back up an external drive.
Second, iDrive does not delete any files from your online account, unless you explicitly do so by forcing a sync with your computer/external storage.
Third, iDrive is almost a version control system, as it stores versions of your file. In addition, only the changes between versions is stored, so the full file size doesn’t count against your storage limits. Needless to say, you can pick the version of the file to restore.
Its hard to overstate the importance of these features. Carbonite Regular, for instance, automatically deletes files after 30 days if it no longer finds the file on your computer. This means that if you were to run out of space on your computer – you have 30 days to go upgrade your hard drive before the files cease to exist on the Carbonite servers. You’d have to upgrade to Carbonite Pro to get service that matches iDrive. I hated the fact that this critical piece of information was not clearly called out on most services.
I shoot in Camera RAW, and my hard drives are always bulging at the seams – so having all those files on my computer forever, was simply not an option. iDrive seemed ideal for my situation.
In addition, the system uses two levels of encryption. First there’s the login that is required to access the account, and the use of the secure HTTPS protocol to transmit your files over to iDrive. Second, there’s an additional password that iDrive claims is not stored anywhere on the iDrive servers, which is used to further encrypt the files with 256-bit AES encryption.
There’s also very convenient access to your files using a web browser interface.
I’ve been using iDrive for about 6 months now, and I must say that I’m relieved not to have to actively think about storage and backup.
