IDrive review: an excellent application managing local and Internet backups

There’s something to be said for a good backup utility that handles both local and web/cloud-based backups. We’ve looked at the best cloud-based storage services for your Mac, and while many of them are ideal for sharing files or documents, some offer complete backup solutions for Mac.

IDrive falls on this line, offering not only the ability to recall a specific file, but also tools to permanently back up your entire drive to the cloud while allowing you to drag and drop files the Google way Drive.

It’s a powerful mix that makes it a great app, and while the web side of things could be simpler (see also iCloud Drive), an impressive number of payment options for different team sizes and the ability to back up Office 365 and Google Workspace. data could also make it a perfect option for businesses.

The software offers a wide degree of support and requires Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan or later to install and run.

Price

The subscription-based tier system offers a free basic account with 10 GB of online disk space for free, with no credit or debit card required. This free 10GB tier allows local backups and is pretty generous, but the real steal is the $2.95 per year IDrive Mini plan. This isn’t a typo either; For less than $3 per year, you can access 100 GB of storage. This can be expanded to 500 GB for $9.95 per year. This significantly undercuts even Google’s strong pricing options for Drive.

IDrive Personal Account supports one user, multiple computers, and offers 5TB of online storage at $69.95 for the first year. Full details on account offerings and pricing are available on the IDrive website. If you opt for the Personal plan, you can use IDrive for multiple devices – there is no limit per account.

All of this combines to create a very affordable service for backing up just about anything, and it’s all encrypted too.

First impressions

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Once you’ve downloaded and installed IDrive, created an account, and assigned permissions to your Mac’s hard drive and file locations, you’re ready to go.

The app immediately began backing up key files on my Mac, including my Documents and Pictures folders, and did so without needing any guidance, although you can get as granular a backup as needed.

The option to create a local backup could be very handy if you don’t like Time Machine, and IDrive will let you restore files from your account, a local location on your drive, or by ordering a drive from the company with your data. on it – ideal as a last resort.

Features

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Whether you use the free plan or pay for IDrive, there’s no denying that it’s an ideal Mac citizen. It sits nicely in the background, quietly going about its business, and offers a whole bunch of menu options that are easy to use.

Users can drag and drop to a Finder window to easily share files, and there’s an Optimization option to slow things down if you ask more of your Mac. Backups can be scheduled, files can be excluded, and an archive cleanup tool maximizes your cloud storage by matching 1:1 items for deletion that you no longer have on your Mac, ensuring you don’t lose them. ‘clutter with old ones. files.

Overall, there are just about every option available and everything is easy to analyze, with just one button to click to open a data log.

Where IDrive shines is in its reliability and breadth of platform support. It’s simple to work with HFS+, APFS, FAT, NTFS, exFAT and other file formats, and create cross-platform backups. As expected, it’s also easy to customize the inclusion and exclusion lists and specify which files are backed up and which are left alone.

The software is reliable, and although its natural instinct is to grab all the available bandwidth it can find on your Internet connection and use it, it managed to transfer over 755 GB to a cloud server in 14 hours approximately during my initial test (bandwidth can be easily customized as needed so as not to cripple device connections around your home or office). Quick access to support videos is available at www.idrive.com/videos, which may be useful for new users.

As is IDrive’s tradition, the company still offers its IDrive Express program, in which IDrive will send you a hard drive to borrow, after which you can back up the data, send it back to the company via a prepaid box, and IDrive will do it. put the data on their servers for you. This becomes even more useful if tens or hundreds of terabytes of data need to be backed up and there is limited time or bandwidth available. Technical questions were quickly answered by IDrive staff, and features such as scheduler, local and online backups, and file restore functions ran smoothly during testing.

Problems

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It seems churlish to nitpick with such excellent value for money, but I found the web app side of IDrive to be much slower than more dedicated file sharing options like Google Drive, OneDrive, or iCloud Drive. Several times I had to refresh the page because it was slowing down, and the design seems a little dated for my liking – although that might be a more personal thing.
I admit, however, that the variety of sharing options (upload limits, time limits, and optional password protection) is welcome.

Although IDrive does a good job of reporting the progress of a task via a traditional progress bar and a counter of the number of items successfully copied, an elapsed time counter and/or an estimated time remaining counter can help to give the user a better idea of ​​how long a task will take. took and how long it might be in progress so they can better plan their next copy. Granted, it depends on the company’s design aesthetic, and they may not want to overwhelm the user with information.

The arguably more important top address is a strange bug I found during testing in which IDrive asks for permission to access the entire contents of your hard drive. This is normal on macOS, and although you have to drag an app icon to the privacy settings, it doesn’t seem to be immediately effective and the action had to be done more than once. In my testing, this action ultimately granted permission to my Documents and Desktop folders while initially denying it. The bug was eventually fixed, but it seemed strange to me.

Should you buy IDrive?

Aside from the permissions bug, there is a great suite of tools available with IDrive. The app handles local and internet backups well, the IDrive Express program is a nice feature, and the simple fact is that IDrive provides a ton of online backup space at a good price. Customization is good, it’s easy to specify which files to copy and which to ignore, and it’s hard to argue with the end result. That being said, IDrive is definitely worth your attention, and I hope they continue on this path in the years to come.

IDrive sits alongside Backblaze in the cloud backup space. While it may not be as conducive to quick file sharing as Google Drive, it goes above and beyond with a host of options and subscription plans to ensure your data stays where you can reach it .