There is clearly a need for a good backup utility that can handle both local and web/cloud-based backups. I’ve looked at several of the best cloud-based storage services for Mac users, and while many of them are great for sharing files or documents, some also offer full Mac backup solutions.
IDrive is a representative product. iDrive not only provides the ability to recover specific files, but also provides tools to continuously back up your entire drive to the cloud. Also, like Google Drive, you can easily move files by dragging and dropping.
iDrive has established itself as a great app thanks to its powerful combination of features. Although the web interface may be a bit unsophisticated, iDrive also offers payment options tailored to various team sizes and Office 365 and Google Workspace data backup options, making it an ideal choice for businesses. there is.
The software offers various levels of support. Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan or higher is required to install and run.
price
iDrive has a subscription-based plan, and you can use a free Basic account that provides 10GB of online disk space without a credit or debit card. This 10GB free account is quite generous with local backups, but the real value lies in the $2.95 per year IDrive Mini plan. You can get 100GB of storage for less than $3 per year, and you can expand this to 500GB for $9.95 per year. This is very affordable even compared to Google Drive’s powerful plan.
The iDrive personal account allows one user to use multiple computers and provides 5TB of online storage space for $69.95 per year for the first year only. For more information about the various account options and pricing, visit iDrive. websiteYou can check it here. If you choose the personal plan, you can use iDrive on multiple devices, and there is no limit to the number of devices per account.
All of these factors combine to make it a very affordable service for backing up almost any data, and all data is encrypted and protected.
first impression
After downloading and installing iDrive, you’ll be set up by creating an account and granting permission to your Mac’s hard drive and file locations. The app immediately starts backing up your Mac’s important files, such as your Documents and Photos folders, without any setup required. Of course, you can make detailed settings as needed.
The fact that it offers a local backup option can be useful for users who don’t prefer Time Machine. iDrive lets you recover files from your account, from local storage on a disk, or, if necessary, by ordering a drive containing your data from iDrive. This is ideal as a last resort.
function
Regardless of whether you have a free or paid plan, iDrive is an ideal app for Mac environments. It runs quietly in the background and provides various options in the menu, making it easy to use.
You can easily share files by dragging and dropping them into the Finder window, and an optimization option is also provided to reduce speed if your Mac’s resource usage increases. It has a backup schedule feature, an option to exclude specific files from backup, and an archive organization tool that matches and deletes items that are not on your Mac 1:1 from the cloud, ensuring that storage space is not wasted due to old files.
Overall, it’s easy to use, with almost all options provided and the data log can be opened with a single button click.
iDrive’s strengths include high reliability and wide platform support. It can be easily linked to various file formats such as HFS+, APFS, FAT, NTFS, and exFAT to create cross-platform backups. Additionally, it is easy to use the function that allows you to freely specify which files to include and exclude from the backup.
The software is reliable and will make the most of your Internet connection’s bandwidth to upload data, but you can adjust the bandwidth in the settings as needed to avoid affecting other connections in your home or office. In initial testing, we were able to upload about 755GB of data to the cloud server in about 14 hours, and support videos are available at www.idrive.com/videos for new users.
Following iDrive’s tradition, it still offers the iDrive Express program. In this program, iDrive temporarily rents a hard drive to the user. The user backs up the data and sends it back to the company in a pre-paid box, and then iDrive uploads the data to the server. This is useful when you need to back up tens or hundreds of terabytes of data, but time is limited or bandwidth is limited. iDrive’s staff was quick to answer my technical questions, and the scheduler, local and online backup, and file recovery functions worked without a hitch during my testing.
problem
This may be a minor complaint considering iDrive’s excellent cost-effectiveness, but the web application speed was much slower than dedicated file sharing services such as Google Drive, OneDrive, and iCloud. A few times the page was so slow I had to reload it, and the design felt a bit outdated. Of course, this may be a personal preference. However, I was satisfied with the various sharing options such as download limits, time limits, and password protection.
iDrive does a good job of communicating the progress of a task through a traditional progress bar and counter for the number of items copied, but it would be useful for users to display elapsed time or estimated time remaining, allowing them to easily determine how long a task is taking and how much time is remaining. This may be due to iDrive’s design philosophy of not providing excessive information to users.
A more important issue is a strange bug discovered during testing. iDrive asks for permission to access the entire contents of your hard drive, which is expected in macOS. You’re asked to drag the app icon to the privacy settings, but this doesn’t take effect right away, so I had to do it multiple times. During testing, after repeating this process, I was eventually granted access to the Documents and Desktop folders, but was initially denied permission. This bug was eventually resolved, but it felt a bit strange.
Should I Buy iDrive?
iDrive efficiently handles both local and Internet backups and provides useful features such as the iDrive Express program. In particular, it stands out for providing large-capacity online backup space at a reasonable price. Users can easily specify which files to back up and which to exclude, supporting a high level of personalization. Considering all these points, iDrive is a remarkable service, and we expect it to maintain this quality in the future.
iDrive is on par with Backblaze in the cloud backup field. Although it is not optimized for fast file sharing like Google Drive, it supports keeping data safe through various options and subscription plans.
editor@itworld.co.kr
Source: www.itworld.co.kr
