Backup forum

Since I value the safety factor of having deleted files retained for long periods of time, CrashPlan no longer suits my needs, and is a bit expensive to boot. Their continual reduction in features and services over the years has finally reached the point where they do not provide a service that meets my needs.

Regarding IDrive, it seems to me that most of the complaints / bad reviews for IDrive are because users were either not very technical or were not paying attention to their usage. IDrive is clearly NOT a set-it-and-forget-it kind of service, especially if your storage needs are anywhere close to their plan quota. This is annoying, but not a complete deal-breaker. If you need set-and-forget, Backblaze is probably what you need. Or even CrashPlan (but at this point, their features are similar and Backblaze is much less expensive.)

If you can monitor the service, IDrive is a good value so long as you don't actually need storage greater than 10 TB, and by using one of the heavily discounted options, my first year is essentially free. 

The free express backup seeding is very attractive, saving weeks/months of online uploads before everything is actually backed up. This is something Backblaze should implement. OR, <cynical comment> perhaps it is their way of not actually having to provide unlimited space to those with large backup needs.</cynical comment>

So, I've signed up with IDrive and for the express backup.

I'll, of course, report back if I have any issues.

One thing I will be curious about is whether or not the express backup appears to be compressed. My guess is that yes, it will be compressed, and since it will also be encrypted with my private key, IDrive will not be able to de-compress it on their end. And, yet, the native file size will be charged against my quota.

I'll be continuing to use a separate backup application for my local backups. (It is not good practice to use the same backup application for both your local and your cloud backups. It leaves you too much at the whim of the application provider (another lesson learned from my CrashPlan experience when they decided to drop their local backup feature).)

Last edited by RTPVid (2021-10-09 21:20:07)