Mac OS X Online Backup Reviews & Prices

Carbonite Review: Mac OS X Online BackupGo to Site | Back to Top

[Editor's Note: Carbonite has set up a special discount for NextAdvisor.com visitors. Visitors receive 10% off of a one-year plan and 14% off of a two-year plan which combines the NextAdvisor discount with Carbonite's two-year discount. Visitors will save 21% off a three-year plan through Carbonite's three-year discount.]

Carbonite is comprehensive and robust online backup service that will not wow you in terms of special features, but will keep your important files backed up. It's a simple that program runs invisibly in the background. As with all online backup services, the initial backup will take a while. Depending on your Internet connection speed and the amount of data on your hard drive, it could take a day or more. Your computer is completely usable during this time, but you'll need to keep it on and connected. Subsequent backups will take less time as Carbonite will only need to save new files and previously backed-up files that have changed.

By default, Carbonite backs up your documents, preferences, email, photos, and music. We like that Carbonite takes care of preferences and emails automatically, since many online backup services don't, requiring the user to manually locate these files and add them to a backup schedule. However, it won't back up files larger than 4GB unless you tell it to.

In the event of a crash or any other data loss, you simply use the downloadable Carbonite InfoCenter to restore your lost data. But Carbonite's usefulness goes beyond disaster recovery. While we generally talk about an online backup service as a remedy for catastrophic data loss, there's another feature users will love and use much more often, and that's versioning. Carbonite will automatically save up to twelve versions of every file you back up. This allows you to roll back to a previous iteration of any file to recover lost changes. It's like the ultimate "undo." Anyone who's ever made unalterable changes to a large text or graphics file will recognize the value in this feature.

Carbonite can also be used to access files from any computer that has an Internet connection. Simply log in to the remote access section of carbonite.com and you'll see all your files, just as you would if you were looking at your hard drive (minus the programs). It's a good feature, and it's one you'll find with many online backup services, although it's not as evolved as it is in a product like SugarSync. You can't, for instance, use it to securely share files with others. They're for your eyes only. A small knock against an otherwise great service.

Carbonite offers unlimited storage for a single computer for $49.46 per year (after discount), roughly $4.12 per month. Two- and three-year subscriptions can bring the price down to an equivelant of $3.61 per month. Unlimited backup is a good deal, but users considering which backup plan they'd like should note that set-limit backup plans generally allow the syncing of multiple computers, whereas unlimited plans (like Carbonite) will only back up a single machine.

For pure online backup, Carbonite is a great bargain. While it may not have all the fancy features other online backup providers have, the setup is simple, fuss free, and comprehensive. You'll just set it and forget it—until the day you need to restore your files.

Mozy Review: Mac OS X Online BackupGo to Site | Back to Top

[Editor's Note: Mozy is offering NextAdvisor visitors an exclusive discount of 20% off with promo code: GOLD, until the end of March. This discount is applied on top of Mozy's annual-plan promotions, bringing the total discounts on one- and two-year plans to 27% and 30% respectively.]

Mozy is a leading online backup service that really gets a number of things right. It's frequently compared to rival Carbonite; both are good options for unlimited online backup. Mozy may not be a common name to most, but its parent company EMC is a giant in the information infrastructure industry.

Mozy, like other online backup services, is designed to run transparently in the background. Set it up initially and you won't really have to touch it again, unless your hard drive crashes or you want to take advantage of some of its more advanced features. Its default backup set is not as comprehensive as Carbonite's, so if you want it to back up your email you'll need to enable it after selecting "Advanced Backup Sets" in the preferences. Mozy is very configurable, and advanced users will probably want to adjust a number of settings in there to suit their needs (we might suggest setting it up for more frequent backups).

Your initial backup will take time. In fact, if you have a large hard drive you'll need to keep your computer on and Internet-connected for a day or more. After that, backups are quick, backing up only recently created or changed files.

The main purpose of online backup is to keep your data secure in the event of catastrophic hard drive failure. But there are other, more regular uses for it as well. You can recover individual files that become corrupted or are accidentally deleted (deleted files stay on Mozy's servers for 30 days). You also have the ability to roll-back a file to a different version, say one you created a few days ago. This is enormously helpful if you make an unalterable change to an important document. To us, this seems to be the best unsung feature of online backup. And Mozy makes it fairly easy.

Mozy offers a number of methods for file restoration. It works best with the freely downloadable Mozy client. Another option, for those who've had a truly catastrophic crash is to have Mozy send you DVDs (the process takes a few days and is not free). While Mozy does offer you the ability to access your files from any Internet-connected computer, the process is not quite as fast or easy as it should be. We prefer Carbonite's one-click download to Mozy's awkward retrieval notification system. Those who think they will need remote file access in a pinch, would be advised to go with Carbonite.

Mozy's unlimited storage plans start at $4.21 per month (after discount) for unlimited storage. An annual plan is $46.01, or just about $3.80 per month. A two-year plan will save you even more.

So, between Carbonite and Mozy, which is best? Ultimately, we like Carbonite's remote access options, default backup sets, and smarter backup system a bit better. Mozy, however, has a good backup client, and you can select monthly, rather than annual plans. And, of course, Mozy is a bit cheaper. Those who really can't decide may want to take advantage of Mozy's free use of 2GB to see if the service is right for them.

SugarSync Review: Mac OS X Online BackupGo to Site | Back to Top

[Editor's note: SugarSync offers a 17% discount for subscribers to its annual plans. Customers must pay for a year's worth of service, in order to receive the discount.]

SugarSync is the Swiss army knife of online file storage, and while it's more expensive per-gigabyte than the unlimited storage options offered by Mozy or Carbonite, its versatility can't be matched by either.

Setup is easy: you download the file synchronization manager onto your Mac or PC (or both). After specifying which folders you want to back-up, SugarSync takes care of the rest, automating incremental backups of previously synced documents and newly created ones. Like Mozy and Carbonite, SugarSync gives you web-based access to your backed-up files. SugarSync goes the extra mile by incorporating Facebook photo sharing, multiple computer syncing, and music streaming. It's a great way to not only back up a single computer, but to keep a number of computers synced, whether in they're in the same house or in remote locations. It also doesn't matter if they're Macs or PCs; a single license gets you downloads for both. The synchronization manager is well-designed as is the web interface. There are also free Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, and iPhone apps to keep your data truly mobile. The iPhone app is really something, allowing you to stream your remotely stored music, view your documents, and upload your photos right to your SugarSync account (and hence your Mac or PC).

Despite our high praise for the service, two things should be noted about SugarSync. One is that the default backup settings are not nearly as extensive as other online backup services; you will need to manually select non-document folders such as those that contain your system preferences. The second thing to note is that SugarSync cannot back up your Outlook messages or Firefox favorites.

SugarSync's plans start at $9.95 per month for 60GB. Upgraded plans are also available, ranging up to $39.99 for 500GB. For those with small enterprise backup needs, SugarSync offers excellent plans for businesses, starting at $29.95 per month.

Yearly agreements cut the costs down significantly, essentially giving you two months free. A 30-day free trial will give you time to evaluate whether or not it's worth it. We think that it is; it's rare that we come across a program that does so much more than we expect.

IDrive Review: Mac OS X Online BackupGo to Site | Back to Top

[Editor's note: IDrive offers a 17% discount for subscribers to its annual plans. Customers must pay for a year's worth of service, in order to receive the discount.]

IDrive is a good, no-frills backup solution for Macs and PCs which fulfills expectations, but doesn't go much beyond. Perhaps it's unfair to expect the service to wow us; after all, the purpose of online backup is to keep your data safe and secure in case of a hard drive crash. There's no question that it does the job; by default IDrive keeps you informed of all its actions. And it's pretty smart about them too, optimizing bandwidth usage based on your level of online activity (this is probably why our initial backup of 8GB took over five hours).

IDrive backs up your important data: preferences, photos, documents, music. Those are just the defaults, however. You can have it back up anything, including your applications. In fact, IDrive is full of options. If other programs have left you wanting more control over your backups, IDrive might be a good alternative for you.

The PC version has a couple of options the Mac version doesn't. If you choose, you can use your own personal encryption key for added security. It also adds the option of using the IDrive Explorer, which maps IDrive into your system just as if it were an external hard drive.

Like many other online backup services, you'll have access to your data anywhere you can connect to the web. Sadly the web interface is clunky, and it can take a while to navigate to your file if it's buried down in your file structure. We were also disappointed at the lack of access through dedicated smartphone apps. Though we could access the site through our iPhone's web browser, we could not do anything with the files.

Unfortunately there's also no support for sharing files or public storage areas. One useful aspect of many other backup services is the ability to set permissions for folder access, or send one-time access permissions to a friend or colleague. If this is an important feature for you, you'll want to look elsewhere.

For pure online backup, IDrive is a solid option. $4.95 per month gets you 150GB of space. While some other online backup providers offer unlimited data storage, IDrive does allow you to keep two computers backed up, as long as they fall within the 150GB limit. You can try out the service with their offer of 2GB of free storage that you can use for as long as you want.

Time Machine Review: Mac OS X Online BackupGo to Site | Back to Top

Unlike the other services reviewed here, Time Machine is not an online backup service. It is an automatic backup system that is built into Mac OS X Leopard, and comes standard on new Mac computers. Instead of backing up your files online, Time Machine copies your documents onto an external hard drive. Time Machine is similar to an online backup service in that it works automatically in the background, and requires no actions or interference from you after the initial set up process.

When you connect your Mac to an external hard drive, Time Machine will ask if you'd like to make the external hard drive your backup drive. If you say yes, Time Machine will copy the entire contents of your computer to the backup drive. After this initial backup, Time Machine will make incremental backups, copying just the files that have been changed since the previous backup. As long as your backup drive is attached to your Mac, Time Machine will backup your files every hour of every day, saving the hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month, remembering how your Mac system looked on any given day in the past. Once your backup drive is full, Time Machine will alert you that it will start deleting previous backups, starting with the oldest first. You can easily backup multiple Macs on a single external hard drive, as long as it has sufficient storage space. Time Machine works using fairly elegant software that will not disrupt you or slow you down while you are using your Mac. The default setting is to backup your entire Mac, but it is easy to select certain files or folders that you wish to exclude. Retrieving stored files is also simple and straightforward.

Time Machine is designed to work seamlessly with the Time Capsule, Apple's wireless hard drive, which is available in two sizes. A 1 TB Time Capsule is $299.00 and a 2 TB Time Capsule costs $499.00. With a Time Capsule, Time Machine can continuously backup your Mac or Macs without cables. We found that connecting with a cable does make the process much quicker, particularly when retrieving stored files. Apple also advertises that the Time Capsule works as a wireless router, but we found that its signal was fairly weak and ineffective for this purpose. The machine also gets quite hot when in use. It does, however, interface very nicely with Time Machine.

Time Machine is a useful and well-designed feature, and works especially well with Time Capsule. Hourly backups of your Mac system or systems become effortless. However, the flaw in this system is the fact that a Time Capsule or other external hard drive is still hardware, and therefore vulnerable to the same dangers as your computer itself. It could potentially fail, or be stolen or damaged. While there are many advantages to this backup system, it is inevitably less secure than an online backup solution.

IBackup Review: Mac OS X Online BackupGo to Site | Back to Top

[Editor's note: IBackup offers a 17% discount for subscribers to its annual plans. Customers must pay for a year's worth of service, in order to receive the discount.]

If IBackup sounds similar to IDrive, there's good reason for that. Both are owned by Pro Softnet and use the same software client for backups. At first glance the big difference is the price. IBackup gives you 10GB of storage for $9.95. That's a dollar per megabyte, and considerably more expensive than its sister service (which gives you 150GB for $4.95 per month). 10GB was just enough for our test computer which is light on the multimedia. Anyone who has even a small collection of videos and photos will burn through this in no time, requiring an upgrade.

On the Mac, things with IBackup were not as smooth as they were with IDrive. Whereas IDrive's setup was pretty effortless, IBackup was somewhat messy. Hourly backups were slow, and did not play nicely with our firewall. It also seemed to want to backup our user folder twice, overrunning our 10GB limit.

Things get a little more interesting when you look at IBackup's online file access. The slowness we complained about with IDrive's web-based control panel is absent here, as are the lack of sharing options. You can share individual files or folders, and apply a host of options including link expiration, password control, write-access, and max number of downloads. We're not sure why IBackup chooses not to share this functionality with IDrive, but it would have improved our impression of the latter.

IBackup's real business is its Enterprise solutions. Also running at about a dollar per gigabyte, IBackup's business-level services help business backup their MS SQL server databases and Exchange servers. They also boast support for Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), SEC, NASD, HIPAA, and Gramm-Leach-Bliley compliance.

It's hard to recommend IBackup to Mac users, because of the cost and the hits to functionality. IDrive is a better deal with the same software, and services like Carbonite and Mozy offer even cheaper prices for unlimited storage. While we like its web interface well enough, it's just too expensive and doesn't plug-and-play. IBackup also lacks any kind of free trial. However, businesses, particularly those in the legal, health, or financial fields, will want to give IBackup serious consideration. It's the only online backup service we've reviewed so far that offers you assistance in making sure enterprise storage is compliant with federal regulations.