IDrive Review: Seamless Backup Solution For All Your Devices
Offers easy-to-use could backup on all major platforms
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Backing up your files is crucial, and there are various tools to do that, but one of the most commonly used ones is IDrive. If you want to learn more about this software, stay tuned for our IDrive review.
What is IDrive and what can it do?
Before you can start using IDrive, you’ll need to create your account. The service will offer to generate an encryption key for you, but if you want more privacy, you can generate your private key.
Once you create an account, you need to download and install the client and log in with your account and that’s it, you’re ready to back up your files.
What can IDrive do?
Cloud and local backup
IDrive works primarily as a backup tool, and it allows you to quickly and easily back up your files to IDrive servers or another drive on your PC.
In addition to backup, you can easily restore files right from the software just as easily. To make the process more streamlined, there’s also a scheduling feature, so you can automate your backups.
Notifications are available as well, and you can get email or desktop notifications and ensure you never miss a backup.
Lastly, the software supports continuous data protection, so all your files can get synced as soon as you make changes.
But that’s not the best part, the software is available on both Mac and PC, as well as iOS and Android, meaning you can back up data from multiple devices to a single account with ease.
Clone and computer backup
The software also can clone and restore your drive, and this feature wasn’t as easily accessible as the cloud backup one, so you might miss it.
With this feature, you can back up your entire PC, or you can choose to back up individual drives or disks.
Just like before, it’s possible to back up your data both locally and online. While IDrive isn’t as advanced as other cloning software, it’s great to see that this option is available.
Cloud Drive
IDrive also can create a cloud drive, and you can use it to sync your files with ease. This is a welcome but simple feature, and it’s not enabled by default, so if you want to use it, you’ll have to enable it beforehand.
You can sync files automatically, or you can drop them to a dedicated folder to sync them.
Server Backup
It’s worth mentioning that IDrive also offers server backup, so you can use it with MS SQL, Exchange, Oracle, Hyper-V, MS SharePoint, and VMware. This is a welcome feature, especially if you’re a business user or a server administrator.
Microsoft 365 and GoogleWorkspace support
Lastly, we have to mention the support for Microsoft Office 365 and Google Workspace backup, so if you’re concerned that you might lose your data, you might want to consider IDrive as an additional backup option.
Does IDrive backup all files?
IDrive doesn’t back up all files by default, however, you can easily back up the entire driver or entire PC with IDrive.
Can IDrive see my data?
All data you upload to IDrive is encrypted using the 256-bit AES encryption, however, if you use an IDrive-generated key, your files could be potentially decrypted by IDrive.
On the other hand, with a private encryption key, IDrive won’t be able to encrypt your data at all, so for extra safety, use a private encryption key, just remember to keep it saved at all times.
Is IDrive safe and secure?
From a technical standpoint, yes, the service encrypts your data and with the ability to use a private encryption key, you can enhance your security. However, it all depends on how much you trust IDrive as a company.
How long does IDrive keep files?
IDrive will keep your files forever unless you manually delete them.
How many computers can you have on IDrive?
The company claims that you can have unlimited computers connected to a single account. However, this might depend on your subscription model.
How much IDrive storage is free?
IDrive offers 10GB of storage for free to all its users.
Is IDrive worth it?
Before we answer this question, we need to mention a few issues that we experienced during our testing. We had problems backing up data locally, but this is most likely a temporary bug or an issue on our end.
In addition, the user interface can sometimes be cumbersome to use, especially if need to select multiple files or folders. Other users complained about the upload speed of the service, so that might be a problem for some.
So, is it worth it? If you have multiple devices on different platforms that you want to back up, then yes, IDrive can be useful since it can easily back up files on all of them.
The cloud storage feature feels a bit limited and simplistic compared to other services, so we wouldn’t recommend it. If you want something more advanced, feel free to try any other personal cloud storage service instead.
Overall, IDrive needs a few tweaks, mostly in terms of user interface, but other than that, it’s a pretty solid cloud backup tool, so go ahead and download IDrive for a test run.
Although we didn’t experience any issues, few users reported that IDrive backup is stuck on preparing file list, but that can be easily fixed.
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