![]() ![]() Cloud storage on its own tends to be the cheapest of these three options but doesn’t include fancier features like syncing, file sharing, or automated backups. With cloud storage, you have to manually move your files to the cloud drive, and you can access them only through the internet. Think of it as putting your files on a storage drive at a friend’s house (your friend in this instance is a corporation). Cloud storage is essentially a remote external storage drive.Details at a glanceĥ TB (upgradable to 10 TB for $100 per year)ġ TB (can add more at a rate of $0.00599 per GB per month)ģ0 days for free, $2 per month for one year, or $2 per month plus $0.005 per GB per month forever And if you just need as much space as possible, go with IDrive. If you want to nerd out over every detail of your backups, go with Arq Premium. If you just want software that works and does everything for you, stick to Backblaze. Although Arq appears to be a smaller company than Backblaze or IDrive, support was just as quick to respond to our questions its documentation, however, isn’t as thorough, searchable, or readable without a glossary. But Arq Premium doesn’t support continuous backups, instead relying on scheduled backups, so there’s always a chance it won’t be perfectly up to date. Its restoration process is far less cumbersome than Backblaze’s and speedier than IDrive’s, too. During setup, Arq Premium encourages (but doesn’t require) you to use a private encryption key for a secure backup. The Arq Premium software gives you a lot of control over how your backup works, including options to choose how long to keep files around, to select any external drives, and more. Arq Premium supports up to five computers, and if you need more than the included 1 TB of storage, it’s an additional $0.00599 per gigabyte each month (which amounts to about $6 per terabyte each month, making it more expensive than Backblaze and IDrive for data hoarders). Not trying to diss Backblaze, they sell a fantastic service for an affordable price, but you probably shouldn’t rely on it as your only backup.If you like to configure software to meet your specific needs, Arq Premium, available for Windows and Mac, offers far more customization options than Backblaze or IDrive and costs less than both for 1 TB of storage. Most backup services, Backblaze included, stores your backup data in a single copy (with erasure coding). There is also a difference between a “personal cloud” and a backup service. They (probably) use erasure coding on a single data center for storage, but if that data center burns to the ground, your data will burn as well. Most cheap providers offer no multi geo redundancy (that’s how they keep the price down). Really important stuff like our family photo album gets archived “yearly” (or more frequently depending on if it fits on a disc) to Blu-ray M-disc media, with identical copies being stored at physically separate locations, but then again, I’m paranoid :-)įor our documents, it’s something like 4-3-2, and photos is 6-4-3.Įdit: most of the cloud redundancy and file versioning is for paid accounts only.Įdit 2: and yes, it really depends on your cloud provider. My personal setup is that I keep all our “personal data” in iCloud, which then gets synchronized to a Mac mini in my house, and the mini then creates a local backup and a remote cloud backup (Arq backup to another cloud). Loss of data due to hardware problems is probably the least of your worries, but loss of account/access replaces it, so making either a local backup or another cloud backup is still a good idea. So, if we look at it from a “3-2-1” backup perspective, your data exists in 2 copies in the cloud, and if you also keep data local you have the 3-2-1 part covered (3 copies, 2 different media / formats, 2 remote). ![]() OneDrive will even alert you if many files change over a short time period. OneDrive has unlimited file versioning for a 30 day rolling period, so in case of malware you can roll back to an earlier version. Most major cloud providers store your data in multiple geographically separate data centers, with a redundancy of 2+, so even if a single data center dies, your data is still safe with redundancy, and they start restoring your redundancy level to 2+.įurthermore, most of them offer some level of file versioning for 30+ days, I.e. If you use one of the major cloud providers like OneDrive, Google Drive, iCloud or Amazon Drive, chances are you don’t strictly need another cloud backup. The short answer is “It depends on your cloud provider”. ![]()
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