IDrive Review

This review was last updated on April 13th, 2016.

IDrive is a universal backup service that appeals to a wider audience as it perfectly caters for personal or small business/enterprise level. A one stop solution to backing up on your PCs, Macs, iOS and Android apps; and their service even extends to social media accounts. The service offers extensive features but is simple to use, they offer an incredibly wide array of unique features that I am going to go into.

Price Plans

IDrive offers three simple plans for, these plans are the basic plan, personal plan, and business plan.

The Basic plan comes completely free and starts with 5GB of data. The second plan they offer is their Personal IDrive Pro account, featuring 1TB of space for $45 USD annually although they offer deal if you pay 2 years at a time.  The third plan they offer is their IDrive Pro for business and this is priced at $75 USD per year.

You can add more space depending on your needs on the IDrive Pro plans. Overall the pricing is very competitive compared to other competitors; and the services they offer have a great degree of flexibility which means you can tailor it to meet your personal requirements. The personal and business differ in the fact that the business plan offers support for more corporate needs, they offer features such as server backup, premier installation, and priority support.

Features

• Universal Online Backup
• IDrive Express Physical Storage Shipping
• IDrive Wi-fi (Hybrid device)
• File Sharing
• Instagram Backup
• File Archiving
• Server Backup
• Disk Image Backup

The service provides an integral backup solution for multiple devices and platforms; IDrive was deigned to backup unlimited PCs, Macs, iPhone, iPad and Android devices. There is also the option for hybrid local storage with IDrive Wi-Fi, while the IDrive Express is an unusual service that allows for quick retrieval and backup of your data of up to 3 TB in less than a week via physical storage shipment by mail, negating any bandwidth usage. Maybe not appealing to all, but interesting to have nonetheless.

Data is synced across all the devices you have linked to the service, and real time backups automatically update your IDrive files when changes are made and new versions are saved. However, thanks to true archiving, you can retrieve any old version indefinitely until you delete it or run a complete Archive Cleanup.

You can create multiple accounts using your storage space and monitor backups from a single administrator console. The service also offers IDrive rewind to restore earlier versions of multiple files at once.

Security

Data is encrypted on all drives using default 256-bit AES encryption as well as with a private key that is never stored on the server. The same encryption level is used while transferring files, and IDrive ensures that all clear text logins are protected as well.

Due to being focused on backups, keeping your data secure and redundant is a huge part of their business. They follow all industry leading standards from HVAC temperature controlled environments and earthquake ready server mounts, with high grade security measures against viruses, malware, and just about everything else, with 24/7 monitoring.

Speed Test

I was pleasantly surprised with the restore feature, which was able to restore a 135MB video file within 9 minutes. Admittedly, I’m on a rather slow ADSL connection with only 5Mbps download and 1Mbps upload bandwidth. Because I’m on a relatively slow Internet connection, speed is everything, and iDrive didn’t fail to impress me. The incremental and compressed backups make it easier for your network to digest the files being transferred and allow for fast uploads/downloads of your data, it also means that your computer processing power and internet bandwidth is less affected. Real time backup detects file changes, and can backup your files on automation, this means that you can always rest assured that your files are securely stored.

 Data Backup Capabilities

This is where IDrive shines most. The service allows backups of any file formats from multiple devices. The remote management system allows you to backup from any browser you can access your account from. This means you can check things like logs and scheduled backups. Their service extends to even offering extra backup services such as Facebook and Instagram for example social media accounts, this means that the service they provide stays up to speed with the modern consumer.

All of the services can be daunting for a non-technical user, but once you get going, it’s not as complicated as it looks. With that said, backup options are extensive. You can map drives for backup, use their hybrid backup with IDrive Wi-Fi – a feature that uses local storage for fast file access with dedicated backups and restores, and benefit from true archiving, which never deletes old copies from the server unless you manually choose to perform an archive clean up. File versioning also allows you to re-wind and retrieve old file versions in a snap.

Data Restore Capabilities

As for the restoration process, you have multiple options. You can search and restore data from the app or browser provision after a 30 day period of it being in the trash or deleted. As mentioned, true archiving allows for multiple copies of files in case you need older versions; this part of their service makes the restoring process in the event you have lost any data. Lastly the IDrive Wi-Fi allows you to get all your important files back to you locally as a form of hybrid backup and restoration. But, we should also mention the mail shipping program – IDrive Express – which allows you to backup or restore up to 3 TB of data on physical drives by having it shipped instead in less than 1 weeks’ time.

Support

IDrive support is easily accessible, and the best part about this service is that they have great form fillers to really specify who you need to contact in order to get help with your issue. They also offer online chat, as well as phone lines operating Monday to Friday. The online help center is also complete with tutorials and important links, this means that for any problem you may encounter there is always a line of support.

Conclusion

In conclusion, IDrive is a good choice for cloud storage and backup and the price is extremely competitive. They offer great features from hybrid backup, mobile app support, affordable annual pricing and much more. On top of that they offer unique and modern methods to backup content like Facebook or Instagram, this diversifies them from other services out there. While their plans aren’t the biggest storage wise, you have flexibility to upgrade your plans as needed. IDrive cloud storage can appeal to individuals or businesses alike.

Pros:

• Pretty darn cheap – starting at only $3.72 per month
• Free local backups
• Fast transfer speeds

Cons:

• There is no monthly billing option
• Perhaps an overwhelming number of settings